When you first got your driver’s license, did you take your parents’ car out? Perhaps tentatively at first, and then with more confidence each time? And yet, it was always your parents’ car, and always would be, but you got used to it, and maybe they got used to the idea of you in it. Well Mark Morris has had the proverbial keys to the parents’ car—Lincoln Center—for several years now. Even so, given his puckish nature, he’ll always seem like the teenager in the Buick Roadmaster. And that’s not a bad thing.
Lincoln Center, where Mark Morris Dance Group has performed regularly in recent years—with more frequency than even BAM, near his headquarters—dominates Manhattan’s culturescape in the genres of classical ballet, music and opera. Morris is no neophyte, with his company nearly 30 (!) years old. His modern style is straightforward, rhythmically attentive, often joyous. And yet he structures his dances with the great care of a classicist, from the full-length works to the shorter ones. It’s earthbound and exalted all at once. read more
Mark Morris has proven how deft he is with opera, particularly when it includes his wonderful dancers. His productions of Romeo & Juliet: On Motifs of Shakespeare, Orfeo ed Euridice, Platée, King Arthur—and the sublime L’Allegro ed il Penseroso ed il Moderato and Dido and Aeneas for his own company—all integrated his astute sensitivity with music and his playful, earthbound choreography.
Now he has taken a bit of a departure in directing Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of Joseph Haydn’s L’Isola Disabitata (The Deserted Island), with a libretto by Metastasio, in five performances at John Jay College from Feb 18- 28. There will be no dancers or chorus, just four soloists and an orchestra: sopranos Takesha Meshé Kizart and Valerie Ogbonnaya, tenor Vale Rideout, and bass-baritone Tom Corbeil. read more
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