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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
For its twenty-fifth-anniversary season, in March, the Mark Morris Dance Group staged a monthlong blowout. There were three full programs of dances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, plus three programs of smaller pieces--"Solos, Duets, and Trios"--at the company's headquarters, across the street. There were photo exhibitions and panels and interviews. BAM's Rose Cinemas showed Morris's favorite movies; its cafe featured musicians of his choice. There was even a karaoke night, which Morris led off with a rendition of Patsy Cline's "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray."
It was all quite grand and--typically, for Morris--brash, since one of the developments it celebrated was the end of Morris's career as the leading dancer of his company. He is forty-nine and the director of a large troupe. It's time to go, and, to his credit, he's going, but almost nothing in this month of dances was more thrilling than the one short piece he did appear in, the 2001 "From Old Seville," where he and the superb Lauren Grant perform a sevillana, with castanets. The dance is a comedy--they're in a bar, there's a sexual triangle--but most of the comic effects derive simply from Morris's dancing. Has ever a rear end (and this one was in a business suit) had so many different moves? Has any other performer shown such rhythmic and dynamic range--early, late, hard, soft--and always told us something thereby? When will we see a dancer like this again?
Which brings us to the great question of the season: "Dido and Aeneas." Morris created this adaptation of Purcell's...
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