Dance

This was a great dance show with live chamber music, an added bonus.

The first piece was The Argument with a piano and cello music by Schumann.  The second was the Wooden Tree with some very interesting music by Ivor Cutler.  As Mark Morris explained in the Q&A after the performance, Ivor Cutler was a Scottish musician and radio celebrity.  These were quirky songs delivered by Cutler in a rich voice, recording though this time.  Some were accompanied on organ, some spoken, but all strange, unexpectedly funny.  The dance captured this very effectively.

The last piece was the Festival Dance with a string trio playing Hummel.  This was a composer I had never heard of, but it was a beautiful piece, and the dance really captured the music.  So often I see modern dance, and it doesn’t capture the music, or seems unrelated.  In this case, the rhythm and the cheerful tone of the music was perfectly matched.

After the performance, Mark Morris came out, and immediately took charge of the question from the audience.  To the question “Why live musicians?” which I assume he often hears, he said because it is so difficult with the dead musicians, plus shipping them is so expensive.  He enjoys music, listens to lots of music of all types, and wants to make the music an integral part of his show.

Mark Morris Dance Group website

Mark Morris Dance Group Program Notes

with City Center Ballet

A sold out performance in the Moore Theater, and Pilobolus was, to quote H, amazing. This type of modern dance is interesting, compelling, innovative, with effective music.  Its hard to describe, but there is a physical element that draws ooh’s and ah’s from the audience – and you don’t usually hear that at a dance show. I am thinking of one scene where one dancer is holding himself up on his arms in the middle, like a see-saw, and another pushes down on his head, and he pivots down like a board, and then another pushes down on his feet, and he pivots up.  All the while, he maintains his straight position.  Or in Walklyndon, where 4 dancers roll around the stage as a giant ball.

The program was changed slightly to have Gnomen instead of Symbiosis after intermission.

The last piece was called the Hapless Hooligan in Still Moving. It started off as a cartoon on a big screen.  Then a silhouette of a dancer emerged from the mouth of a screaming child, and the story started. It was a clever mix of silhouettes, comic strip and animation.  Sometimes the dancers emerged out in front of the screen.  Sometimes the silhouette loomed large, and then small, as the dancer approached the projecting lights behind the screen.

After the ovation, the Pilobolus Director Michael Tracy and author Art Spiegelman did an informal discussion with the small group that stayed behind.  Although I hadn’t planned on staying, I am a big fan of Maus, so I changed my mind and sat down. It was a very dynamic collaboration from the sounds of it, with dancers and directors improvising while Spiegelman sketched. Apparently “Hapless Hooligan” was a stock character from around 1910. And the film noir dance was an apache dance, a sort of violent pas de deux from the 20’s in Paris.  Some of the dancers were at the back – they seemed so much younger and smaller than they did on stage!

Pilobolus Program Notes