Mark Morris, Master of the Obvious

[kenjari]

On Thursday night, I saw the Mark Morris Dance Group, and I have to say, I was not impressed. He has a reputation as a musical choreographer, but, as a musician, I have to disagree. All he does is fallow the melody/foreground. There's no deeper engagement with the music - he's just following along, not adding or interpreting anything. I did think that the choreography itself, the movement, weren't bad at all - I might have liked them better if they had been paired with different music. Morris works in some folk-dancing inspired material that I thought worked well, and the dances had a certain amount of lightness and charm at times.

Bedtime - to Schubert Lieder
I liked the second section the best, because of the use of folk elements. Unfortunately, the third section was a too-literal response to the music "Erlkonig".

All Fours - to Bartok's String Quartet No. 4
This piece was the least interesting to me, precisely because I know and love the music so very well. I kept thinking tow things: I already know how the piece goes Mr. Morris, and Does he get this music? The section to the slow movement with the cello solo almost achieved some interesting engagement with the music, but never made it all the way there.

V - to Schumann's Quintet in E-flat Major, OP. 44
Of the three dances, I liked this one the best. While it still followed the foreground and melody of the music, it contained tantalizing hints at a deeper engagement. And it made even better use of folk-style elements than the first piece did.

Comments

[qualario.livejournal.com]

Can I take issue with choreography to music in general, and to the notion of a "musical choreographer" in particular? If choreography generally ignores the features of the music (as has been more often than not the case in my experience), why have the music at all? Shouldn't all choreographers who use music be "musical?"

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yes, choreography to music should be "musical". But there's way, way more to being musical than just following along with the melody and foreground. It's not just about the notes played or heard. Dance should go beyond just illustrating the notes and rhythms of the music, it should say something to and/or about the music. It should speak to a larger sense of what the music is.
For example, during the opening of the final movement of the Bartok, the dancers stood in place, in plie, and swung their arms in time to the opening chords. Sure, it acknowledged the features of the music, but it didn't say anything about those features.
So what has your experience with dance been? What choreographers and dance companies have you seen? And has it mostly been ballet or modern?

[qualario.livejournal.com]

I did technical work for Conn's International Dance Festival for a summer, did some conducting work for a collaborative project with student composers and choreographers when I was in grad school, played in ballet orchestras (although that didn't give me much of a chance to study the choreography)...almost all of my experience with choreography and music has been hands-on rather than as an audience member. I have seen some of the more landmark dance/music collaborations, mostly on recording--Appalachian Spring, some of the Cage/Cunningham projects, etc.

In that time, my experience has been that the choreographers I've worked with sometimes seem to exhibit an understanding of something as vague as the "feel" of the music. Sometimes, they don't appear to get that far. A lot of the choreography I've seen looks self-indulgent, as if it's a dance piece that just happens to have this piece of music occurring simultaneously. If that's intentional, great--I can get behind that--but I get the sense that generally speaking, choreographers don't go into a piece with that in mind.

There have been exceptions to that, obviously, but in a lot of cases, if the choreographer is designing "musically," I certainly haven't been able to discern how they're going about it.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

As I'm sure you know, the Cage/Cunningham projects were based on the idea of indeterminacy, so the choreography and music were deliberately not at all aligned. I also think being musical is a different issue when you're talking about a dance that tells a story like Appalachian Spring and something more abstract like a lot of the work of Balanchine or Jiri Kylian (Nederlands Dans Theater).
Here's an example of some choreography that I think is very musical without merely following or illustrating the surface features of the music:
Echoes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNJdsMbmlFk&feature=related)
The video quality isn't perfect - it darkens the lighting a lot in several places, and, since it was taken from the audience, sometimes the angle is a little too tight. (I saw it live.)