UCLA Performing Arts The Mark Morris Dance Group,
considered one of the world’s leading dance companies, will perform
at UCLA’s Royce Hall this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.
By Aphrodite Manousos
Daily Bruin Contributor
Choreographer Mark Morris is careful to keep his shows fresh and
exciting. He selects the program’s contents by considering
what other shows are in active repertory and what shows have
previously been performed in the particular city in which the
company will be dancing, to ensure that audiences will always be
visually excited.
From the on-stage sexual friction of “The Argument”
to the heartfelt and cheeky portrayal of the interwar years in
“Dancing Honeymoon,” viewers leave Morris’s shows
satisfied.
Morris and his famed dance troupe will be at Royce Hall for a
two-night performance on Nov. 10 and 11.
Morris labels his performance as a modern dance concert. When
choosing his dance pieces and creating choreography, Morris always
returns to the blueprint of the music. He works from the music or
waits for a piece of music to attract him. Only after he is seduced
by a danceable rhythm does he know what the dance will become.
Morris enjoys listening to several different types of music and
has neither prejudice toward nor preference for the type or style
of music he uses in his performances.
“I listen to a lot of different types of music,” he
said in a recent interview. “If a piece strikes me as
danceable, it doesn’t really matter what it is.”
This veteran artist has become an unparalleled modern dancer,
considered by many to be the greatest contemporary performer in the
field. Though well known for his exuberant choreography, Morris has
also received critical acclaim for his clever use of folk
themes.
He feels that his talents come simply from his childhood
interest in dance.
“Most children just dance automatically,” Morris
said. “I think everybody dances up until they’re about
six.”
Morris himself became interested in several different types of
dance.
“I started studying flamenco, then ballet and then
folk,” he said.
Morris hesitates to predict the future for himself but is
content with knowing that he loves his career and how it has turned
out.
 UCLA Performing Arts Director Mark
Morris will showcase his Dance Group this Friday and
Saturday at UCLA’s Royce Hall. This will be its only stop in Los
Angeles.
His only plan at the moment is an upcoming project with the
legendary musician Yo-Yo Ma, whom he describes as brilliant. Ma has
previously played the cello onstage in Morris’s “The
Argument,” an acclaimed “relationship” dance set
to art-folk music.
Outside of dance, Morris is enthusiastic about the construction
of several studios and offices that will finally unite his studios
and his entire company in one center of operation.
Besides his plans for future collaborations and the construction
of his headquarters, Morris and his dance company tour six months
out of the year.
“My management is working on booking us all the time, so
people, (such as) producers of various theaters, call the company
and ask us to come some place,” Morris said. “We put
together tours to link together towns that we’re going
to.”
His latest tour begins in Minneapolis, goes on to three stops in
California and then moves to Hawaii. Despite everything he is
currently working on, the hectic touring schedule does not seem to
trouble Morris at all.
“I’m doing what I want, which is great,” he
said. “Everyone should do what he or she wants. I have a
wonderful company and I have great musicians and it’s a
strange traveling job and it’s kind of great.”
Morris is a man whom many would argue goes beyond the epitome of
talent, but Morris finds it difficult to define or say exactly what
talent encompasses for him.
Illustration by RACHEL REILICH/Daily Bruin
“I’m not sure what part of it is a nascent gift and
what is just working hard and concentrating and using your
imagination and skills,” Morris said. “There are lots
of people who I think are talented who don’t do anything much
with it. It’s a very individual thing.”
In response to the critics who incessantly have his name on
their tongues, Morris only said that it is all right for them to
dislike his work as long as they have a good reason.
“You don’t have to love everything I do but you have
to have a reason (for disliking it),” Morris said. “It
has to be well written and well thought out. So I read everything
and it’s, of course, one person’s observation, and
that’s interesting to me.”
DANCE: The Mark Morris Dance Group performs at Royce Nov. 10
““ 11 at 8 p.m. For ticketing information, contact the Central
Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101.