MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP Program A

Review by Celia Ipiotis

Joyous, that’s the word that reverberated through the audience on the opening night of the Mark Morris Dance Group’s three week season at the Joyce Theater.  Over the course of the evening, music jumped from the bouncy tamborine-peppered score of Louis Gottschalk, to British and American stage musicals songs, and finally into the jazzy sounds of stride pianist and composer James P. Johnson.

Each of the four finely crafted dances expressed a distinctive personality. Pizzica charmed with the jangling of tambourines dancers patted on different body parts while swiftly traveling across the stage in a ribbon of swinging legs and arms swooping into back arches. A constant flow of dancers broke into a swiftly alternating combinations of same or different sex partners–part of Morris’ vocabulary from the earliest days  of his rise  as a major American modern dance choreographer. A fine Colin Fowler was on piano for the revival of the 2025 work.

Set to Geroge Gershwin’s sprightly Preludes for Piano, Morris’ Three Preludes (1992) featured the stalwart Dallas McMurray in a solo to music performed by Fowler on piano. Complex in its simplicity, McMurray spoke directly through Morris’ steps. Dressed in a shirt and pants with white spats and white gloves by Isaac Mizrahi (long-time collaborator), McMurray exhibited nuance and technical thoughtfulness. Balletic moves shifted from easy balances on half point in arabesque, to leaps and pirouettes that slipped into musical slides melodically responding to the great Gershwin. 

Dancing Honeymoon (1998), forged a dance piece to a series of lively 1920’s and 1930’s popular American and British musical and dance hall numbers. They were performed by Gerturde Lawrence and Jack Buchanan with Ethan Iverson on piano and vocalist Blaire Reinhard. Giddy and affectionate, it drew everyone into folk dance style arm-in-arm line and circle dances that busted into feisty acrobatics, cartwheels and poses around folding chairs that became part of the animated set.

You’ve Got To Be Modernistic (2025)  to the music of James P. Johnson arranged by Ethan Iverson closed the show. A seven- person dance, the fabulous Courtney Lopes moved downstage, torso rippling, and shoulders shimming. Each section arrived with an abstract narrative that winked at vernacular dances like The Charleston (attributed to Johnson) the Black Bottom, and the Shimmie. In one instance, a line of females slapped each others’ rears adding punctuation to the music. It was all about  “dance,”  a deliverer of happiness.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis

*Photos by Julieta Cervantes