A MATCHING PAIR
Ma and the Mark Morris Dancers
Photo: Cylla Von Tiedemann
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Mark Morris stands now, as the decade begins to wind down, as our century's
youngest great choreographer. Far sooner than most dancer-choreographers,
Morris has stepped back from his work, as if to see his visions whole. In his
latest endeavor he is joined by--indeed, he was commissioned by--a perfect
working partner, a man possessed of a kind of aesthetic joy at once profound
and clear: Yo-Yo Ma. Since he was four or five years old this virtuoso has been
playing J. S. Bach's Third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, a work he has
described as a "battle between scales and arpeggios." Once immersed in the
music, Morris began to dream it, experiencing a nightmarish visual correlative
to the piece's emblematic descending notes: in his sleep he saw one of his
dancers tumbling down a flight of stairs. Thus the name of the new dance,
Falling Down Stairs, and thus its set: a simple flight of stairs and a
central plinth. Like Morris's great L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il
Moderato (a work set to Handel), this smaller dance offers a pellucid
example of synesthesia. You feel as if you are seeing the music and hearing the
dance, and you have the magical sensation of feeling music make dance happen.
Yo-Yo Ma will play Falling Down Stairs, The Office, and a new
dance, set to a commissioned score by Lou Harrison, during the Mark Morris
Dance Group's performances at Berkeley (March 6-8). Later in the month the
company performs in Palm Desert and Thousand Oaks, California. Next month it
will bring L'Allegro to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, in
Costa Mesa (April 3-6). At the Brooklyn Academy of Music it will perform two
programs, one all-Harrison and the other including the premiere of a piece set
to Monteverdi madrigals (April 15-20). --N.D.
| March 1997 Cover Page
| Pop and Jazz
| Film
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LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
Going head to head in The Rivals
Photo: Jennifer Lester
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The rivals of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) are
Captain Absolute and Ensign Beverley, aspirants to the hand of the heiress
Lydia Languish, and it is no breach of confidence to reveal that they are in
truth a single person. Why the subterfuge? In most plays amorous intrigues
arise because young folks and their elders are at loggerheads over wedding
plans. Here, for a change, the young lovers hitch up just as their guardians
would wish them to, but that is no good either; youth craves rebellion, as age
must assert authority. "Age" in this case involves Mrs. Malaprop, whose garbled
refinements of expression have been the ticket to immortality beyond the
confines of the script. A second plot concerns the gracious Julia and the
jealous Faulkland, who keeps jangling their harmony with groundless discord,
pushing himself and his lady relentlessly to the brink of tragedy. As all the
greatest playwrights do, Sheridan roots actions in character, and his Mozartean
comedy has room for some bitter follies, too. Long neglected by American
players, The Rivals returned last season to Connecticut's Hartford
Stage. The airborne production deserved to run forever--or failing that, to
transfer to Broadway or be broadcast to the nation. Alas, it folded unrecorded,
as regional shows do. But perhaps it paved the way for two new stagings this
month, at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre (March 1-April 13; 215-574-3550)
and at Oregon's Portland Center Stage (March 15-April 19; 503-274-6588). --A.B.
| March 1997 Cover Page
| Pop and Jazz
| Film
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SING US A SONG
The songwriters (John) Kander & (Fred) Ebb are no new kids on the block.
In fact, their portfolio of material for Broadway (Flora, The Red
Menace, Cabaret), TV ("Liza With a Z," "Baryshnikov on
Broadway"), and stars from Sinatra to Streisand has stocked an off-Broadway
review of recycled favorites (And the World Goes `Round) that was a
smash in its own right. Currently, the poisonous, scintillating revival of
their fierce, gritty classic Chicago is packing them in at the Shubert
Theatre (212-239-6200), with Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth starring in roles that fit them like snakeskin gloves. But no gold watches for the
song team, please! This month Kander & Ebb are back on the Great White Way
with Steel Pier (212-307-4100), which turns the clock back to the
Atlantic City of the 1930s, when dance marathons, Big Bands, saltwater taffy,
and the high-diving horse were all the rage. The show is billed as a
romance, but if past experience is any guide (and it usually is), K&E's
latest will be more tart than sweet. --A.B.
| March 1997 Cover Page
| Pop and Jazz
| Film
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Austin Baer is a writer based in New York.
Nancy Dalva is working on a series of essays on Merce Cunningham
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