Deanna Darr for Rapid City Press

The Mark Morris Dance Group is the only major dance company in the country committed to performing with live music, and it's a mystery to founder Mark Morris why others don’t do the same.

Diane Baker for Taipei Times

This is the kind of weekend that gives dance lovers nightmares about empty wallets. Too much choice, too little time. However, with careful budgeting of schedules and money, it is possible to see all three terrific groups that are performing in Taipei today and tomorrow.

Diane Baker for Taipei Times

Buoyancy and light were the order of the day at the National Theater in Taipei last weekend, while the Experimental Theater was filled with loneliness and despair — and cherry red jumpsuits.

On June 28, 2017, in Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Mark Morris Dance Group premiered a work, Numerator, set to Harrison’s Varied Trio for violin, piano,and percussion. The title of the program? Lou 100: In Honor of the Divine Mr. Harrison. That brings to seven the number of works that Morris has set to music by a man he considered a friend.

The Mark Morris Dance Group presents two programs at the Mark Morris Dance Center; one a centennial celebration and the other made up of miscellaneous pieces featuring a world premiere.

Though born almost 40 years apart, the composer Lou Harrison and the choreographer Mark Morris, both from the West Coast, became one of the great artistic partnerships. At Tanglewood on Wednesday and Thursday, the Mark Morris Dance Group performed “Lou 100: In Honor of the Divine Mr. Harrison."

The Mark Morris Dance Group presented Lou 100: In Honor of the Divine Mr. Harrison and all the works on the program were choreographed to the music of Lou Harrison, someone that Mr. Morris adored. 

This week and next, MMDG is performing two programs at home. There are four works on view. One, Serenade, is a solo, premiered five years ago. Another, Pacific, was originally made for San Francisco Ballet, in 1995. Grand Duo, from 1993, is one of Morris’s most popular, and rousing pieces. The most recent work, Numerator, is from last year; this is its New York début. ★★★★✰

HUNTINGDON, PA.-- The Mark Morris Dance Group, a groundbreaking artistic ensemble noted for technically-dazzling-yet free-flowing choreography and the use of humor and eclectic musical choices in its dances, will perform three acclaimed works, "Words, A Wooden Tree, Grand Duo" at Juniata College at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 18, in Rosenberger Auditorium in the Halbritter Center for the Performing Arts. 

With 35 years of impressive and variously poetic dance-making behind him, Mr. Morris appears in no way ready to confine himself to the tried and true. Whatever title he gives his next dance, it is likely to be provocative and may turn another new corner.

Morris has put a lot of different things into this new, more open sonic territory. There are tributes to spring, notably the title of the piece, “Spring, Spring, Spring.” (It’s the name of a song in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”) The dancers all wear flower garlands in their hair, and the men wear jeans in hotly vernal pink, blue, orange, yellow, and so on, with bare chests. Four of these guys stick together and zoom around wagging their rear ends naughtily.

No choreographer alive has a higher reputation for musicality than Mark Morris; and that reputation — despite several blunders along the way — has been well earned over more than 30 years of marvelously eclectic creativity. From the Baroque to American modernism, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky, from Stephen Foster to jazz, his dances have brought music to meet dance in ways that have expanded our appreciation of the alchemy that these two arts can achieve together. And he is singularly, courageously, committed to live music in a field where, for economic reasons, recordings are increasingly employed.

Two of Morris' most distinctive veteran dancers took time recently to discuss both the repertory and the particular thrills and challenges of dancing for the renowned choreographer. Between them, Lauren Grant and Michelle Yard have logged 35 years of experience with his endlessly diverse, musically sophisticated work.

Philosophers and physicists can go on debating whether logic and unpredictability can coexist. Mark Morris has already answered the question... Morris' works unspool with airtight musical logic. His choreography follows the music in a rolling, running rhythm of phrasing and sudden punctuation, movements that fall somewhere between common activity and high stylization. It all feels utterly natural. Logical.

With few exceptions, the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) has shown up at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, each winter since I moved to the DC area almost a decade ago, and for this I'm extremely grateful. Morris' choreography captivates me in a way that keeps me coming back for more. Not only do I wish to see his work repeatedly, but I envy those performing them. If watching Morris' dances brings me such bliss, then I imagine that actually dancing them must be even more satisfying...His works approach perfection.

Chris Waddington for The Times-Picayune

Playing to a packed house at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts, Mark Morris Dance Group pulled off a jaw-dropping feat of magic on Saturday. In fact, make that three feats of magic, for this troupe of 18 dancers, a string quartet and a pianist delivered what is likely to be the best night of dance, the best night of classical music, and the best night of theater that New Orleans will see in the 2011-2012 season.