{"id":61262,"date":"2013-10-11T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T20:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=61262"},"modified":"2013-10-21T17:10:56","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T21:10:56","slug":"on-mirth-milton-and-nostalgia-a-conversation-with-mark-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/11\/on-mirth-milton-and-nostalgia-a-conversation-with-mark-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"On Mirth, Milton, and Nostalgia: A Conversation with Mark Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Twenty-five years ago, Mark Morris created <\/em>L\u2019Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a vibrant, enthralling choreography inspired by the music of George Frederic Handel and the poems of John Milton. The <\/em>New York Times hailed <\/em>L\u2019Allegro as \u201ca glorious outpouring of dance invention and humanistic imagery,\u201d and Joan Acocella stated that it is \u201cwidely considered one of the great dance works of the twentieth century.\u201d Morris may indeed be the most talked-about modern dance choreographer of his generation, and he has a personality to match his renown.\u00a0He didn\u2019t so much appear for our interview as <\/em>arrive, bursting into the room in red socks and his trademark scarf, thrown insouciantly over his shoulder.<\/em><\/p>\n

A natural performer, Morris communicates with enthusiasm and urgency; his hands sliced through the air dramatically as he spoke. Our conversation was punctuated by his impish laugh and his opinions on everything from Lydia Davis, country western music, his figurine collection, and his choice of vodka.\u00a0Morris is a voracious reader, and during the course of the interview in his New York apartment, he repeatedly pulled books from his shelves.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the last great book you read?<\/b><\/p>\n

You know what\u2019s not great but fabulous<\/i> is this book of love notes between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.\u00a0It\u2019s called Baby Precious Always Shines<\/i>. And I just read this Mary Renault\u2013style gay potboiler called The Song of Achilles<\/i>, by Madeline Miller. I have to say I was so thrilled that Lydia Davis won the Man Booker International Prize, because I was plugging her book to everyone I met. When I read her Collected Stories<\/em>, I lost my mind. Those two-sentence stories really fucked me up. I think she\u2019s a genius.<\/p>\n

Is there any type of literature you steer clear of?<\/b><\/p>\n

Boringness! Actually no, I have a tolerance for boringness. If it\u2019s John Grisham I\u2019m not going to read it. I\u2019m not a big best-seller type, but I did read all of those terrifying, evangelical Christian books, the Left Behind series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Really?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, there is a famous book, called Left Behind<\/i>, about the rapture. But then there are over a dozen more that get worse and worse. I read maybe ten or twelve of those books, because I was so shocked that they were the best-selling books in the country. I guess I read them to see how the other seven-eighths live.\u00a0It was kind of an anthropological experiment.<\/p>\n

The text for L\u2019Allegro, il Penseroso<\/em> is made up of poems by John Milton and the music of Handel. What initially attracted you to it, the poetry or the music?<\/b><\/p>\n

Absolutely the music. I heard it in the eighties and immediately decided I had to do a dance to it. It\u2019s so strange because it\u2019s neither an opera nor an oratorio. It\u2019s just these verses set to music, so there\u2019s a huge amount of variety possible. To me that\u2019s completely carte blanche. It\u2019s completely open as to how to interpret it. And the Milton poems made Handel write such gorgeous, evocative music.<\/p>\n

The poems are really odd, too, in the sense that they articulate the divided mind. Did something about that resonate with you?<\/b><\/p>\n

Of course\u2014the bipolarity of it is what made Handel set it to music. And that\u2019s why there\u2019s no one ever alone in the dance. Even during the big solos, there\u2019s going to be another dancer there to interrupt you. There\u2019s all this mirroring and doubling. All of the symmetries of the choreography, whether they\u2019re radial, bilateral, or linear, are all related to the doubleness of the text.<\/p>\n

Your work has inspired so much critical analysis, from writers like Joan Acocella, Wendy Lesser, and Alastair Macaulay. Do you care what people write about you?<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like it when it\u2019s bullshit. I read everything. People say they never read reviews, and those people are lying. You don\u2019t have to like me, you don\u2019t have to like my work, but you have to be able to say something<\/i> about it. I love a vicious review, really ripping something apart, there\u2019s nothing better than that! But it has to be done really courageously and accurately.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a great interaction between you and music over the years.<\/b><\/p>\n

Forever! And it has always been live music whenever possible.<\/p>\n

Were you one of those kids who begged their parents to play an obscure musical instrument? <\/b><\/p>\n

No, I didn\u2019t want to. I sang all the time. I still do, very loudly! When I was young my school thought that because I was smart, I should play the violin. I didn\u2019t like it. All the bully jocks played the drums, and all the smart Japanese girls\u2014I grew up in a big Japanese community in Seattle\u2014played the violin. And I belonged to neither of those categories.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning it\u2019s always been live music. One of my oldest friends, Page Smith, played cello for dances I choreographed when I was thirteen.<\/p>\n

What are you listening to now? <\/b><\/p>\n

As a steady diet, I would say Bach cantatas, hula\u2014Hawaiian music\u2014and country western music from the thirties and forties.<\/p>\n

I think artists should be exposed to a wide variety of things. I love dancing so much that I don\u2019t just<\/i> go to see the New York City Ballet. I go to a polka band or an Indian dance. I know a lot about country western and South Indian music because I love it. I got a lot of that through traveling because of my life as a dancer. That adds to how much I love food and cooking and literature of all kinds. To me that\u2019s so important, as opposed to limiting the scope to allow just a dance point of view, which would be boring.<\/p>\n

Your dance group will be performing L\u2019Allegro<\/i> at the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center in November. It had its premiere in 1988 and has been performed in twenty cities worldwide. Do you get nostalgic when you see it?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t. People who\u2019ve seen it sometimes say they always see a certain dancer in a role, which is based on a little bit of nostalgia. But I don\u2019t see ghosts or get caught up in memories. If I didn\u2019t like it, I would change it. But I don\u2019t wish it was different. That\u2019s what I did then, at that time, to celebrate a certain thing that still needs celebrating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

L\u2019Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato will be performed at the Lincoln Center White Light Festival from November 21 through 23.<\/i><\/p>\n

J. Mae Barizo is a prize-winning poet and cultural critic.\u00a0Recent work will appear in <\/i>Hyperallergic, <\/i>Prairie Schooner, and <\/i>Boston Review.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years ago, Mark Morris created L\u2019Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a vibrant, enthralling choreography inspired by the music of George Frederic Handel and the poems of John Milton. The New York Times hailed L\u2019Allegro as \u201ca glorious outpouring of dance invention and humanistic imagery,\u201d and Joan Acocella stated that it is \u201cwidely considered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[10779,12020,3292,9744,10626,3261,576,12021,12019],"class_list":["post-61262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-alice-b-toklas","tag-george-frederic-handel","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-joan-acocella","tag-john-grisham","tag-john-milton","tag-lydia-davis","tag-madeleine-miller","tag-mark-morris"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Mirth, Milton, and Nostalgia: A Conversation with Mark Morris by J. 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