Choreographer Mark Morris has always been at least one step ahead - adding humour and cheek to innovation and musicality, writes Christine Madden.
This is where your grammar training from Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves becomes valuable. The second International Dance Festival Ireland won't be presenting Morris dancing; it's presenting Morris, dancing. He'd stand out in a troupe of Morris dancers - with whom he has little in common apart from the name. At a generously proportioned six feet two inches, yet with the grace of the snowflakes he tells me are falling outside his window in New York, choreographer Mark Morris has been described as "Fred and Ginger dancing in the same body".
An unlikely mixture, but that's one of the things Morris is known for - as well as the musicality of his choreographic work, his cheeky, scurrilous sense of humour and the exuberance of his productions.
He's even exuberant when talking about them and he has no time for academic minutiae. "I would say that it's great and beautiful and thrilling and perfectly built. My company's unbelievably good, my work is really wonderful to watch and listen to, and my musicians are great. It's real, and it's wonderful."
Morris has dedicated his life, heart and soul to his art. Born in 1956 in Seattle, he moved to New York to pursue his burgeoning interest in the art form that claimed his complete attention and devotion.
In 1980, at the age of 24, he formed the Mark Morris Dance Group, presenting his first performance at Merce Cunningham's studio. Since then, he has, among many other achievements, choreographed more than 100 pieces for his own company; many more for others, including classical ballet companies; formed a second company - the White Oak Dance Project (now defunct) - with Mikhail Baryshnikov; and served as director of dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels from 1988-1991.
To all that, he now adds the imminent appearance in Dublin as the flagship act of the second International Dance Festival Ireland. "I've been every place on Earth, but I've never been to Ireland. Everybody warns me that people are so kind and friendly in Ireland that I'll want to move there. But we'll see. That's what New Yorkers say about themselves, too, so."
Morris and his company are looking forward to presenting four pieces over four evenings at the Abbey theatre; two of them, Grand Duo and Serenade, take their inspiration from music by Lou Harrison. Grand Duo "is the big one", choreographed to Harrison's Grand Duo for Violin and Piano. "It's for 14 dancers, and it's loose, wonderful music in four movements."
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Morris performs the solo, Serenade. "It's for guitar and percussion, and I dance and play percussion instruments. That's a piece I was planning on choreographing, and then he died the day before I started working on it. So it turned itself into a tribute to Lou Harrison."
For another piece, Going Away Party - the only piece the company does to recorded music "because it's to western swing, and this particular music can only be done with that particular recording, and all the musicians on this recording are dead anyway" - Morris had known the music for 15 years before making a dance to it. The last piece, A Spell, is a trio set to "lewd songs" by John Wilson. "I do them several ways, but we do it now with piano, violin and soprano. Those are sort of sexy, secret, dirty songs for a cupid and a nymph and a shepherd. It's about love and sex, and it's beautiful."
Music is the fuel that feeds Morris's passion for dance. "Music is what it's all about. I wouldn't choreograph if it weren't for music." The programme he brings to Dublin musically spans several hundred years, "from about the 17th century to the 1980s".
Is there any music he prefers? "Good music. I prefer good music to bad music," he says with a laugh. Prompted, he adds that he tends "to run away from contemporary, popular music. But I always have. I listen to baroque music a lot, but specifically Bach. The cantatas in particular, but I listen to lots of different kinds of music".
Morris typically combines his love of music with a cheeky imagination. The Hard Nut turns the ubiquitous, frequently saccharine Nutcracker on its head. Instead of the 19th-century Christmas idyll, he features the cavilling Stahlbaum (translated: "steel tree") family, many of the snowflakes, as well as the mother and sugar plum fairy are danced by men - and don't even ask about the Waltz of the Flowers. Besides having fun with the piece, Morris seeks to bring people back to an appreciation of the music. "It's overused and underlistened to. Just growing up as a civilian, that music will kill you; growing up as a dancer, you can't even hear it any more. So to look at the score deeply and listen to it - it's the complete score straight through - that's when you find out what a great piece of music it is."
Morris created this, as well as other major company staples, while director of dance in Brussels. "It was a really good situation - nice theatres, big budgets, good salaries and health insurance. While Brussels wasn't my favourite place to live, I was working in a beautiful opera house and got to work in a perfectly proportioned proscenium theatre with wonderful music. So I cashed in on that artistically." But, he cautions, "just because you have a big opera house doesn't mean your shows are good". Justifiably proud of his dancers, Morris chooses them very carefully. "When I have auditions, hundreds of people come. The last time, I just needed one woman, and there were 350. I like to work with people who have strong personalities."
So, what can audiences expect?
"I want people to leave thrilled and excited, thirsting for more. I want people to love it and be changed somehow. I don't expect unanimity of response. That's what Disney is for." He stops to inject a laugh. "Disney is in order to make everybody the same. My work is not to do that."
A selective guide to the International Dance Festival Ireland 2004
Mark Morris Dance Group The great master of contemporary presents a delectable mixed programme from the hugely entertaining Going Away Party to the signature piece Grand Duo for 14 dancers
Rosas The Belgian Company, headed by acclaimed choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, will perform the beautiful Rain, and de Keersmaeker her personal solo, Once
Thomas Lehmen The conceptual choreographer and dancer from Germany brings distanzlos, his witty piece of dance/performance art
Stephen Petronio Company The New York company presents a fast, furious, edgy urban aesthetic in their work
Sonia SabriIn Her bewitching solo, Rekha, is is based on Indian Kathak dance
Déjà Donné Czech company offers a cynically humorous view of sex and relationships with In Bella Copia
Josef Nadj French artist combines dance, theatre and mime in Le Temps du Repli
Irish companies include Liz Roche's Rex Levitates performing Resuscitate, the fruition of the work she began as choreographer-in-residence at the first dance festival, and Dance Theatre of Ireland with Between You and Me, a collection of powerful duets
International Dance Festival Ireland, May 4th to 23rd. Tel: 01-6790524
E-mail: info@dancefestivalireland.ie www.dancefestivalireland.ie