THE HANGOVER REPORT – Mark Morris’s MOZART DANCES stirs the soul

Mark Morris Dance Group in “Mozart Dances”

One of the handful of my “aha!” moments in dance was when I first encountered Mark Morris’s dance set to Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. The humanity and musicality that oozed out of that work touched my soul in a way that only truly great art can. Last weekend at the David H. Koch Theater, I had the great pleasure of attending (my second visit!) another Mark Morris touchstone, his 1996 Mozart Dances, which closed out Lincoln Center’s summertime Mostly Mozart Festival. Like L’Allegro, Mozart Dances stirred my soul with its profound sense of human nature, as well as its lightness of touch. The piece features a cascading series of seemingly throwaway motifs that reoccur throughout, attaining a cumulative force that’s entrancing and deeply moving.

The evening, which utilizes a company of 19 sensational and idiosyncratic dancers, is comprised of three dance sections: “Eleven” is set to Piano Concerto No. 11, “Double” to Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, and “Twenty-seven” to Piano Concerto No. 27. “Eleven” utilizes the women dancers, while “Double” is a showpiece for the men. In “Twenty-seven”, the entire company is brought beautifully together in moment after moment of elegantly-phrased crescendos.

As mentioned, the Mark Morris Dance Group dancers are wonderful, each excelling at creating their own charismatic, quietly confident personas on stage. Special mention must be made particularly to Lauren Grant and Aaron Loux, both of whom were magnetic in their “leading” (I use quotation marks since Mark Morris is very much an ensemble piece) roles. In terms of the folks in the pit, their music-making was just as inspired as the dancing, as led by conductor Louis Langrée – under whom the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra sounded incandescent – and Garrick Ohlsson and Inon Barnatan on the dual pianos.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

MOZART DANCES
Dance
Mark Morris Dance Group at David H. Koch Theater (part of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival)
1 hour, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
Closed

Categories: Dance

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