E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022danceEVA SOLTESQUINN WHARTONBY SARAH L. KAUFMANT
heaters are open, tickets
are selling, dancers and
singers and actors and
musicians are back at
work ... the pandemic’s
clampdown on the performing
arts is behind us, right? Right?
Here’s what Mark Morris, dis-
tinguished director of the Mark
Morris Dance Group, has to say
about returning to the Brooklyn
dance center that bears his name.
About making art, finally, with his
dancers and a pianist, everyone
together in one big, beautiful re-
hearsal room.
“It was horrible,” says Morris,
65, speaking by phone recently.
“Everyone was freaked out. You’re
scared being next to each other,
and you’re scared to talk to any-
body, and as soon as you touch
something it’s sanitized, and then
you go home and take a shower
right away.”
A siren wails along Third Av-
enue outside his Manhattan
apartment. “There’s a constant
cavalcade of ambulances,” he says.
“It’s a nightmare.”
Back to the joys of creation in
his studios: “And everybody’s in a
mask,” he adds. “I hate masks.”
This is not an “it’s all so pre-
cious to me now” kind of inter-
view. Morris is cheerfully candid,
his words tumbling out at a jaunty
pace because, as he says more
than once during the call, he’s
delighted to be speaking to some-
one other than the few in his
company he talks to every day. But
Morris’s world has violently, fun-
damentally cracked, and he
doesn’t believe it will ever be the
same again. He continues to work,
as he has throughout the pandem-
ic, but you won’t hear him being
squishily sentimental about it.
His company is busy, with
months of upcoming bookingsacross the country. It comes to
George Mason University’s Center
for the Arts on Feb. 26 for two
shows. Morris will be there, too,
but he continues to be wary of
going out and being with people —
the very things that have fed his
art. He has had all his shots and
boosters but got covid-19 in Janu-
ary, which left him feeling extra
cautious.
“I went to a show at Carnegie
Hall, pianist Igor Levit,” he says.
“He premiered a piece by Fred
Hersch, a jazz pianist I love. Then
a couple days later I had a rasp,
which I thought was from loudly
shouting ‘Bravo.’ But it was covid.
“I was alone and terrified for
my mortality,” he says, with a light
touch that doesn’t quite conceal
the truth. “But I’m okay. I thought
I’d feel sort of liberated, like I
could go out a little bit more. But I
still can’t wait to get back home.”
His habits have changed since
before times. He goes to the Mark
Morris Dance Center just three
days a week, and he says he won’t
travel as often with the company:
“I don’t want to expose myself to
other people that much, and it’s a
nightmare to fly.”
But Morris, ever the pragma-
tist, will keep making dances. He
never stopped, even when making
a dance meant squinting at dis-
tant company members occupy-
ing Zoom squares. He’s not one to
sit and wait for the pandemic to
vanish. This is it. This is life now.
“I’m a choreographer who cho-
reographs. I don’t just revise
stuff,” Morris says. “I’m most in-
terested in making up dances in
the studio, and once they open I’m
less interested in them, frankly,
’cause I’ve done it. So to have video
be the only mode of communica-
tion for me was extremely frus-
trating.
“I don’t like to hear my own
voice on tape. I’m not that kind ofa ham.” (He is a bit of a ham, but
there are subtleties within the
genre, for sure.) “There was a
certain amount of trying to keep
people together. We chose that we
were going to keep people em-
ployed as much as we could. ... It
was so chaotic and confusing for
everybody.”
Morris is bracingly honest
about how the pandemic has up-
ended what he does. How it’s set
dancers back in their careers and
artistic growth. How it’s chal-
lenged his institution. Last year
was his company’s 40th-
anniversary season, and it had to
be entirely digital. There were on-
line screenings of repertory
works, short video dances created
by Morris, Q&A Zoom sessions
with Morris and other artists, and
music listening parties. Many of
these, and other digital content,
including on-demand dance
classes and supplementary train-
ing videos, can be viewed on the
MMDG website. The group also
has an extensive YouTube chan-
nel.
The video dances are great fun.
The open, buoyant style of Mor-
ris’s stage choreography comes
through with bright clarity in
these brief spots: the fully
stretched bodies, the smooth, or-
ganic shapes, the serenity and
playfulness. “Sunshine,” 2^1 / 2 min-
utes long, is pure pleasure, accom-
panied by Gene Autry’s recording
of “You Are My Sunshine.” Morris
gave his dancers an assignment:
to film themselves indoors and
out, in three modes: walking, trot-
ting and running. Aided by music
director Colin Fowler and compa-
ny director Sam Black, Morris ar-
ranged the clips into a bouncy,
witty mosaic of color and visual
interest.
For the mesmerizing three-
minute “Fandango,” with Ger-
maine Tailleferre’s luxurious,
light piano composition of the
same name, two groups of dancers
whirled and leaped in the studio,
while Morris watched and direct-
ed over Zoom from his home,
telling them, “Go over there and
stick this leg up,” or, “No, the other
way!”
But entertaining as they are,
Morris wasn’t crazy about doing
them. There were so many frustra-
tions — the weather, the frequent
lack of space and flooring that’s
kind to dancers’ bodies. “I’m
against injuring people,” he says.
He learned he could work with
only a couple of people on Zoom at
a time: “The sound delay, the ano-
nymity of people in masks — it
didn’t work for me.”
Not to mention the pet fur, etc.
“Dancing in your apartment
with cat hair — everybody had the
cat hair,” Morris says. “But also
your mate is in the next room, and
your baby is screaming. So to
make up a full dance was impossi-
ble. That’s why you get these video
dances. They’re short, ’cause I
don’t want to look at a screen all
day long.”
Now that the group has re-
turned full time to its headquar-
ters, is Morris wild with exhilara-
tion? “Periodically,” he says. “But
then someone gets sick. So it’s all
false. False hope. Everything’s ter-rible right now. It’s not great at all.
It’s just a bit better than it was.
“It’s not like, ‘We got through
this.’ I hate that namby-pamby-
ism,” he continues. “I’m not going
to say, ‘Hooray, I’m celebrating,
and everything is great.’ It’s just
not true. People have lost their
whole careers.”
His dancers are tested every
day — positives go home, nega-
tives head to the studio to dance,
fully masked. This has shattered
the rehearsal process.
“I’ve never had a rehearsal with
everybody there,” the choreogra-
pher says. “There are people out
every day because they test posi-
tive, or someone they live with
tests positive, or they’re trapped
in an airport and can’t get here. Or
their child can’t go to school. So
we’re always scrambling. And ev-
erybody is one phone call away
from canceling everything.”
The pandemic, he fears, will
continue to foul up his touring
schedule. In December, the com-
pany flew to Berkeley, Calif., for
three performances. After open-
ing night, two members tested
positive for covid. End of the run.
Cross-country travel for a sin-
gle show.
So Morris is prepared for the
worst, though people are buying
tickets again and MMDG is
blessed with engagements, most
with live music performed by the
MMDG Music Ensemble.
On the program at George Ma-
son: the frisky and enigmatic
“Words,” set to Felix Men-
delssohn’s “Songs Without
Words”; “Jenn and Spencer”; “Pas
de Poisson”; and the mysterious
and exultant “Grand Duo,” accom-
panied by a propulsive folk-dance
score by Lou Harrison.
The most ambitious event is
March 24-27 at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, when MMDG
performs Morris’s masterpiece,
the joyously optimistic “L’Allegro,
il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” ac-
companied by the Handel orato-
rio — a rare happening, given the
production’s expansive scale that
requires extra dancers and a choir.
“We’re ready for everything to
be canceled,” Morris says. “I hate
that we are, but we have to be.”
Nancy Umanoff, MMDG’s long-
time executive director, says
things seem more uncertain now
than a year ago, when everything
was canceled.“It feels more uncertain be-
cause we have more at risk,” Um-
anoff says. “We’re ramping back
up with personnel to do what we
do, but the revenue isn’t coming
back as quickly. It’s scary. Now, if
you’ve hired all the people and you
get there and shows get canceled,
you take a huge financial hit.”
The Mark Morris Dance Center
houses a dance school in addition
to the company headquarters,
and that major source of funding
has plummeted. School revenue is
down by nearly a million dollars,
Umanoff says, though the classes
are full, and there are wait lists.
But distancing requirements
mean fewer students per class,
and with time needed to disinfect
between classes, there are fewer
classes per day.
Licensing of Morris’s ballets is
another revenue stream, but
those scheduled in 2020 keep get-
ting rescheduled.
For the first time in its history,
Umanoff says, the $8 million or-
ganization is running a deficit,
totaling $1.7 million.
Still, there’s the art. Umanoff
says that one, single performance
in Berkeley this past December
was incredible. “We closed with
‘V,’ the Schumann quintet, and it’s
so life-affirming. Just feeling the
music going through your body —
it was so reinvigorating and in-
spiring. Nothing is the same as
being in that room in the dark,
sharing this experience with
strangers.”
Morris takes a more distanced
view. The idea that the arts “are
somehow responsible for making
people feel better, for healing
them in some way — oh, God,” he
mutters. This notion has been
much overstretched.
“ ‘The healing balm of the thea-
ter,’ ” he says, with emphatic dis-
dain. “I hope that’s not why people
are going to shows and reading
books. I love beauty and enter-
tainment, and I also love a joke.
But hold on, this isn’t to solve my
life. If anything, it’s to pick a scab
on your life. It’s like, ‘Oh wait,
there’s more there than I
thought.’ ”
“I’m relieved mostly that peo-
ple are working,” he continues.
“But it’s not like, ‘And now we’re
back to normal.’ That’s never go-
ing to happen.”
So he’s not out to save anybody’s
life. But talk with Morris long
enough, and his affection for the
arts, broadly considered, rings
through. “It’s a nice way to live to
be able to gain something from
live experience of the arts,” he
acknowledges happily. “And I do
like three dimensions. I’m old-
fashioned. I’m pre-device. The an-
swer to what I do is dancing and
music.”
Another siren screams by out-
side his window.
With his company’s touring
schedule in mind, Morris’s wish
for the future is simple.
“A second show,” he says, chuck-
ling. “That’s what I hope for.”Mark Morris Dance Group
performs at 2 and 8 p.m. on Feb. 26 at
George Mason University’s Center for
the Arts Concert Hall, 4400 University
Dr., Fairfax. cfa.gmu.edu/events.For Morris, being an artist amid pandemic is still ‘terrible’ABOVE: Choreographer
Mark Morris says
returning to in-person
performance has been
filled with positive
coronavirus tests,
unexpected cancellations
and lingering anxiety
that he worries has
transformed his art for
good. Morris is director
of the Mark Morris
Dance Group in
Brooklyn, which last
year marked its 40th-
anniversary season —
and had to be entirely
digital.BELOW: From left, Sam
Black and Nicole Sabella
perform in Mark
Morris’s “Words” in
2018.STRATHMORE.ORG | 301.581.5 100March 3 & 4DC-area premiereSTEP AFRIKA!DRUMFOLKRESISTANCE. RESILIENCE. RECLAMATION.