by Thea Singer for The Artery

Mark Morris has the uncanny ability to show us the darkness in light, the still point in a maelstrom (of traffic, of relationships), or, as Joan Acocella put it in her 1993 biography of him, "one noble, one ignoble, version of the same truth." He did so again last night, in a concert of four Boston premieres by the Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble presented in the intimate Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

In the intimate setting of the ICA’s black-box concert hall, Morris and his dancers conjured a world of enchantment.

by Iris Fanger for The Patriot Ledger 

The program of four Boston premieres is a reminder that Morris has lost none of his fervor for live music mixed with dance or his eclectic taste in finding composers to spur his creative choreography. Presented by a company of 17 elegant highly gifted performers, some of them new to local audiences, the evening passes in a luscious mix of joy in dancing and off-beat surprises - a gift to brighten our cold winter.

In the best of all possible worlds, dance and live music are inseparable companions, an ideal that has become a tradition at Tanglewood, where every summer about this time the Mark Morris Dance Group fuses its considerable talents with those of the newly-arrived fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center. And, as a bonus on Tuesday evening (and repeated Wednesday) in Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Morris dancers also enjoyed the good company of an old friend, Yo-Yo Ma. The genial and gifted cellist was on hand for an encore performance of Morris' popular "Falling Down Stairs," an original collaboration between Ma and Morris explored here in 2003, the first year the festival welcomed the choreographer.