Journeying From Head to Toe, With a Layover at the Heart

Journeying From Head to Toe, With a Layover at the Heart

Alastair Macaulay for The New York Times

Heart and brain keep meeting in the work of the choreographer Mark Morris, but each time with new results. Sometimes they marry in an irresistible outpouring whose meanings and structure reward further viewings. Sometimes they fuse in extraordinary dramatic poems buoyed by an underlying dance current. In either case we recognize him as one of the dazzling artists of our day. On other occasions they forge canny but tense alliances, with brain as the senior partner, drawing our attention to special feats of construction, nudging us to notice motifs and asking us to place meaning before pleasure. In a few works they simply collide, cancel each other out, or fight an unhappy duel to the death.