Mark Morris

On The Mark: In Step With Mark Morris

Mark Morris is used to being called names: genius, polymath, maven, enfant terrible, founder, dancer, choreographer. He’s the man who reinvented Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in a groovy Austin Powers party pad, who choreographed himself as the abandoned queen in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, whose program notes acknowledge his mother, “Maxine Morris and god” (small “g” deliberate).

This is also the man who formed the vaunted White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991, who can hang eight honorary degrees alongside his high-school diploma.

Mark Morris is not an ordinary dancer, or choreographer, nor is he a musical madman. His choreography is enlightening, surprising, but follows a certain brilliant logic. He may put on trantrums (apparently), but he rarely puts on airs. There’s something about Mark that remains earthy, connected, and eager for ordinary experience in the midst of intense effort and hard-won success.

Mark has been dancing and choreographing his whole life. By age 19 he was dancing in New York, and two years later he had assembled a coterie of friends that, in 1980, would form the core of the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG), many of whom are still members of the company today.

We squeezed in an hour with Mark on a recent visit to Berkeley to discuss all things dance, beginning with the unexpected approach he took to create his version of Romeo and Juliet, which had its West Coast premier here late last year.

Jennifer Raiser: Your Romeo and Juliet is something of a surprise; it’s quite classical.

Mark Morris: Well, we tried to go back to the sources that Shakespeare would have used as a starting point. People forget that Shakespeare borrowed all the time. We studied medieval gestures to incorporate certain pantomimes into the movement. We tried to put ourselves back into Verona of that moment. This is a place where everyone knows each other, where volatile behavior was acceptable. This was before courtly manners.

MMDG performing L‘Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

You have focused on the conflict between the families even more than the relationship between Romeo and Juliet.

Well, the vendetta is really what drives this story forward. The two main characters, Romeo and Juliet, aren’t especially developed. They have crushes on other people, then they meet. They spend one night together. The situation for them is both weird and good. They don’t have a sense of who they are as mature adults. It’s probable that Juliet would have been ordered by her family to marry Paris, and that would have been that.

On opening night in Berkeley you publicly dedicated one of your rehearsal rooms in your Brooklyn studio to Robert Coles. You also said he “can’t [expletive] retire.”

That was a term of affection. Robert Coles has given us a West Coast home at Cal Performances. He’s always been so supportive and generous to us. He brings us audiences that value and appreciate us. That’s a really big deal.

Your world premiere of Romeo and Juliet in New York was bittersweet.

Yes, my mother, Maxine, chose to die on opening night at around 6:30 p.m. before the 8 p.m. curtain. Her death was not a surprise, but her timing showed great dramatic flair. She would have appreciated the ironic glamour of it all.

And you’ve established a memorial for her?

Yes, we’ve set up a fund in her honor to help kids take dance lessons at our school in Brooklyn, New York. I never went to a formal dancing school, but she made sure to drive me around as a kid for years, helping me take lessons wherever I could. She was truly fabulous.

Tell us about your dance center.

We opened in 2001 in Brooklyn. We have five rehearsal studios, classes, outreach for local children and performance space. It’s amazing. I take a cab to work in Brooklyn, and it’s still a thrill to arrive.

Since you spend so much time in Berkeley, what are your favorite haunts? Restaurants?

Well, I’m usually at the theater, so I don’t have a lot of time to play. But my two favorite restaurants are Top Dog, the hot dog shack, and Chez Panisse. Alice [Waters] always takes care of us.

And you have spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco as well, when you are choreographing for the San Francisco Ballet.

My favorite spot after the ballet is Jardiniere. Traci [des Jardins] is darling and a wonderful chef. I like this tiny Japanese place, Maki, which is a five-stool sushi bar. It’s a miracle. And Absinthe makes a great “girly” drink called the Ginger Rogers. That’s fabulous with their fried chickpea snacks. I usually drink a vodka tonic with no fruit. I specify Grey Goose just to support the French.

Favorite places to go?

I love going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but I’ll miss Madeleine Grynsztejn…Chicago was lucky to get her. And I love the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas. He’s a nut. He’s done an incredible job with that band.

Tell us about your work with the San Francisco Ballet.

SF Ballet is the best classical ballet company in North America, maybe the world. I love them, and they are great. My company and SFB have become very friendly. We make a point to see each other’s ballets. And I love working with Helgi [Tomasson]. He has a great sense of humanity. He can emphasize his strengths without having to bully. He joins me in rehearsal if I ask, but there’s no looking over my shoulder.

You’re known for some great collaborations. Are you working with anyone in particular now?

I am working with Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax on an Ives piano piece and Beethoven’s second cello sonata. Yo-Yo and Emmanuel have been begging me to choreograph those pieces for a while. I rarely take suggestions from others about what music to use. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If they want one piece, I usually do something entirely different.

How do you come up with your music?

I listen to music all the time. I go to concerts, and I always use live music for rehearsal and performance. Pieces just suggest themselves to me.

That’s how I came up with Joyride by John Adams for the 75^th anniversary of the San Francisco Ballet last year. I didn’t want to do a piece that was big and grand and predictable. I wanted to do something fun, something of a celebration of dancing and music. I thought of a weird collision between dancers and pedestrians. And I put TVs on their chests because we’re all so addicted to watching CNN. It’s like having Tinky Winky onstage.

What else are you working on?

The Metropolitan Opera staged Orpheus ed Euridyce in February, the production we did in 2007. When we premiered it, it was a huge success. And I’ve added two new dancers for the company. Working on them now for production this summer. And we’re touring with Romeo and Juliet and Mozart Dances in the spring. There’s a lot going on.

You have a lot to juggle.

[Laughs] I love to do it all. And I have great support from [executive director] Nancy Umanoff and her team. We’ve all been together for a really long time, and we were friends from the start. That’s the ethos of my company. We’re not all crazy suffering artists.

How else is your company different?

You mean I cast black people? [Pauses for reaction.] It’s ridiculous—where are all the dancers of color? I speak a different language than most dance companies. It’s versatile. Because of my repetition and technique, I need the men bigger and bulkier. My dancers have a broader range of movement. They don’t have to dance on pointe. What we do encompasses and makes it broader.

San Francisco Ballet actually has quite a varied style for a classical ballet company. Not like the New York City Ballet; that is too rigid for me. It would make a great softball game, my dancers versus theirs. My dancers would beat their asses!

And with that, an air kiss and a giggle, Mark Morris showed this enraptured reporter the door. Curtain.

Jennifer Raiser is trying to get to the pointe.