MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP.

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP

MEANY HALL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE OCTOBER 22-24, 1998

REVIEWED BY MARTHA ULLMAN WEST

Dancing Honeymoon, Mark Morris's latest work, which premiered in his home-town of Seattle in October, was third on a program of four works that showed the choreographer in many moods--all of them driven by music, all of them containing signature movement and his extraordinary use of space.

Honeymoon should have come last: it's dessert--whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and puff pastry, a veritable profiterole au chocolat created with the light touch we demand from chefs but seldom take seriously in artists.

Only a master craftsman, however, could have created this piece for three chairs and seven dancers (Morris was one of them), performing in Elizabeth Kurtzman's sunny yellow costumes to English music-hall songs of the late twenties and early thirties sung on tape in the first part by Gertrude Lawrence and the second by Jack Buchanan.

It's an affectionate send-up of the all-too-common chair dance, of course--at one point the dancers (dangerously!) play catch with the chairs--but the piece looks extremely British. Suave, sophisticated, soigne, Honeymoon is sometimes rather silly, don't you know, when the dancers stack themselves up on the chairs, reclining and fluttering their bare feet in unison, or Morris mugs and mimes his way through "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You," looking for all the world like the sort of waiter who tells you his name.

It's no surprise that the company's dancers execute the sometimes strutting, occasionally oozing, frequently balletic choreography with tremendous musicality and skill. And Morris, who keeps threatening to stop performing, and is clearly not in the best physical shape, can, and does, still cut the mustard.

The evening began with the 1982 Canonic 3/4 Studies, a youthfully exuberant and highly skillful exploration of the waltz. There are also his signature folk dances in the 1998 Medium, a more somber work based on the death of Schubert, performed in Seattle for the first time. The program ended with the 1993 Grand Duo, a complex piece to Lou Harrison's music that walks the thin line between pretentiousness and good art and sometimes crosses it. Honeymoon is better art, showing Morris at his best--his touch light, but absolutely sure.