Still on Point

[ASUmusicMAN]

Still on Point

Choreographer Mark Morris discusses his new ballet, the structure of music and George Balanchine

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Robert Hilferty

Newsweek

Updated: 10:56 AM PT April09, 2004

April 8 - At 45, with graying curls, Mark Morris is still the reigning bad boy of contemporary choreography. In the 1980s he shocked audiences by dancing in diapers and wielding a baby doll, but his command of dance form, not to mention his musicality, has always been beyond reproach. He has since created a formidable body of work, including masterpieces "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," "Dido and Aeneas" (in which he danced the part of the abandoned Queen Dido himself), "Grand Duo" and the recent "V" (to Schumann's Piano Quintet). In 1991 Morris gained national recognition with a PBS "Great Performances" broadcast of "The Hard Nut," his irreverent take on Tchaikovsky's "The Nutrcracker," which he followed by garnering a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." Today he works out of his own dance studio in Brooklyn. Robert Hilferty caught up with Morris in his studio to look back on his witty, wild career and talk about his latest creation: the April 30 world premiere of "Sylvia" at the San Fransisco Ballet.

NEWSWEEK: When did you know you were a choreographer?

Mark Morris: Well, I was making up dances?actual ones that were performed?when I was 12. But it was not until I made up this dance called "Barstow" when I was 15 that I knew I was good. And at my first show in New York at the Cunningham Studio in 1980, "Barstow" was on the program. I really just made it up without any modern dance training.

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