Mark Morris has been directing and choreographing opera for nearly forty years. Beginning with Seattle Opera’s production of Salome in 1986, Morris has worked on eighteen operas to date and explored operatic music ranging from the baroque to contemporary works by composers such as John Adams. He has worked with many of the world’s greatest opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Royal Opera, English National Opera, and Gotham Chamber Opera. This collection of archival videos showcases Morris’ wide-ranging dramatic imagination, choreographic inventiveness, and profound understanding of music.
Morris’ Orfeo ed Euridice is being performed at the Metropolitan Opera from May 16 to June 8, 2024. Learn more and buy tickets here.
The English painter Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017) was a long-time Mark Morris Dance Group collaborator and friend. Described by art historian Nicholas Serota as, “One of the great artists and colorists of his generation,” Hodgkin’s vibrant, abstract paintings served at the scenic designs for Mark Morris’ Rhymes With Silver (1997), Kolam (2002), Mozart Dances (2006), and Layla and Majnun (2016). In 2024, Mark Morris will premiere a new work, Via Dolorosa, at Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA featuring a Hodgkin painting originally used as the scenic design in Kolam.
While Mark Morris has mostly choreographed to classical music, he has also created dances set to popular music since the beginning of his career. This collection features pieces set to rock and roll (Violent Femmes, Yoko Ono), country western (The Louvin Brothers, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys), and show tunes (Richard Rogers). Mark’s interest in popular music continues up to the present day in pieces like Pepperland (2017), set to music by The Beatles, and The Look of Love (2022), set to music by Burt Bacharach.
In addition to being an exceptional choreographer and dancer, Mark Morris is also a captivating, funny, and thoughtful speaker. This exhibit features a collection of interviews with Mark Morris that span from the late 1980s through a 2014 conversation at Jacob’s Pillow.
We are now featuring the full-length performance videos of three previously excerpted works showcasing Mark Morris as a performer: in “Pièces en Concert” (1986), “Pas de Poisson” (1990), and “Zwei Harveytänze” (1999). Read more about each work in the descriptions connected to each video.
Tom Brazil has been photographing the Mark Morris Dance Group since their earliest days in the 1980s, performing at Dance Theater Workshop and P.S. 122 in New York, and well into their current seasons at the Dance Center and the neighboring Brooklyn Academy of Music. Some of the most iconic images of Morris’s most well-known works, such as Grand Duo, Gloria, Dido and Aeneas, and The Hard Nut — are photographs by Brazil, who has traveled internationally to capture these performances. In 1992, Brazil and the Dance Group published a book together of Brazil’s photographs of the Dance Group since 1983, the year Brazil left his job as a picture researcher at Magnum Photos and began primarily photographing dance. Beyond the Dance Group, Brazil has photographed well over 5,000 performances and served as the house photographer for many presenters and venues around the city over the decades. His work has been published in countless newspapers, magazines, and journals. Please enjoy this selection of Brazil’s brilliant work that expresses the vibrancy, beauty, and humor that Brazil and the Dance Group share.
Tom Brazil passed away on January 29, 2022. It has been such a privilege for the Mark Morris Dance Group to be seen through Tom’s lens over the last forty years. So much of the visual history of the Dance Group is told through Tom’s photographs. We celebrate and honor his life, his artistry, and his commitment to dance through this exhibition.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
The photographs in this exhibit are protected by copyright law and other restrictions, and may not be reproduced, distributed, or published without permission from the copyright holder. Please contact archive@mmdg.org for more information.
