The Mark Morris Dance Company came to the Tryon Festival Theatre at Krannert on May 1 for a two-day run of their appealing and inventive version of George Friderik Handel's 1718 (rev. 1739) pastoral opera, "Acis and Galatea." This was a festive occasion in that the Krannert Center is one of the presenters of this production, and the chorus members were from Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana (BACH), and the pit orchestra players were from the Sinfonia da Camera. The conductor was the celebrated specialist in baroque music, Nicholas McGegan.

To mark its 50th anniversary, the Harriman-Jewell Series co-commissioned celebrated choreographer Mark Morris to reimagine Handel's "Acis and Galatea." The result was an epic old-meets-new production merging dance, opera, and art, presented to sold-out audiences over two nights in the Kauffman Center's Kauffman Theatre.

What better way for the Harriman-Jewell Series to celebrate its 50th anniversary than with an opera-ballet with a story from the golden age of Latin literature?The Mark Morris Dance Group will perform George Frideric Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” on Friday and Saturday at the Kauffman Center.

If you’re not sure whether Mark Morris’ Acis and Galatea is opera or dance or theater or what, then you’re probably on the right track. “That’s historically accurate,” said Mark recently on the phone, pointing out that in the Baroque “opera included all of those things: That’s the whole point.” The choreographer’s extravagant new production of Acis, Handel’s masterpiece drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and performed here February 6th and 7th on the Harriman-Jewell Series, constitutes one of the most auspicious assemblages of talent that Kansas City has ever seen on a stage.

Alastair Macaulay for The New York Times

In his two-act staging of “Acis and Galatea” at the David H. Koch Theater, Mark Morris plunges his audience into the heart of the pastoral genre. He sets the love story of the shepherd Acis and the sea nymph Galatea within a landscape chorally filled with lovers.

Many performances in 2014 took me where I had not gone before. Here I recall just 10 male dancers and the dates, in chronological order, when the scale of their achievement dawned on me. April 24 and 25, Berkeley, Calif.: Aaron Loux.

The lingering flavor of dance in 2014 is bittersweet. It wasn’t much of a year for budding voices or surprising developments. What stays brightest in my memory are mainly instances of established artists delivering more of what they were already known for, several of them for the last time.

High point: The resurgence of the duet as the most expressive and urgent of movement forms. Mark Morris’ “Jenn and Spencer” topped the list, but one also enjoyed memorable duets by Liam Scarlett (the second movement of “Hummingbird”), Crystal Pite, Nora Chipaumire, Alonzo King (virtually all of “Shostakovich”) and Kate Weare.

The Mark Morris Dance Group, which has made this city's Zellerbach Hall its West Coast home since 1987, completed its 200th dance performance here just before opening its version of Handel's pastoral opera "Acis and Galatea" recently—the eighth world premiere the company has offered to Cal Performances, which co-commissioned it. It was, along with Handel's "L'Allegro, il Penserato ed il Moderato," the most singularly beautiful creation of the MMDG I have seen.

Joan Acocella for The New Yorker

I think that one thing Mark Morris’s fans especially like about him, although they might not put it in these terms, is his scholarship. Oh yes, they’ve all heard about his musical erudition and seen the photos of him studying the score as he choreographs. But a matter less often spoken of is that Morris understands, and pumps new life into, old and presumably outdated artistic conventions.

Steven Raskauskas for Broadway World

The crown jewel of this year's Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center is Mark Morris Dance Group's new staging of ACIS AND GALATEA. The much-anticipated production, which had runs in Berkeley and Boston earlier this spring, made its New York premiere on Thursday evening.

Karen Campbell for The Boston Globe

Very few choreographers have the temerity, not to mention the talent, to choreograph and direct an opera. Then there’s Mark Morris, who has tackled 12 operas over his long, productive career.