Works: Ballets by Mark Morris
March 16, 2009
Considering Mark Morris
By: Allan Ulrich for Voice of Dance
What you may notice first in the program handout for the fine all-Mark Morris retrospective currently on stage at the War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Ballet are the cast lists. The names of the dancers for each piece are all arranged in alphabetical order. Although episodes within the pieces are assigned soloists, Morris, I think, is the great democratizer of the traditional ballet hierarchy, and it doesn’t stop with the cast sheet. Peruse the list of 25 dancers who participate in Sandpaper Ballet and you will find the company’s veterans, like Tina LeBlanc, Pierre-François Vilanoba and Katita Waldo, dancing side-by-side with the most recent arrivals to the corps. Much, one might add, as would happen in any listing of the members of the Mark Morris Dance Group.
