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decor consists of a single strand of cheap Chinese lanterns), back in the days
when he was spending much of his spare time dancing with a Balkan folk
ensemble. "I fell in love with the group," he told Acocella. "I fell in love
with several individuals in sequence, and they fell in love with each other."
Something not unlike this is essentially what happens in "My Party."
While there is one show-stopping moment in the finale when the cou–
ples fall to the floor and start rutting-quite amiably, too-the emo–
tional center of the dance is the slow movement, a sweet-and-sour song
without words that a more conventional choreographer would have
turned into a romantic duet. Instead, Morris's dancers form a circle and
embark on a folk-like group dance that is at once austere and mysteri–
ously tender. "Isn't it weird?" he says. "It's somehow become sad or
poignant, or something. I've no idea how. It's plain. I like plain. And
kind of naive." To my eyes, what results is not a sermon on sexual iden–
tity (Morris is not given to sermonizing in any case), but an oddly
haunting evocation of the awkwardness and uncertainty of adolescence,
in which uniformly glamorous bodies and a pas de deux, however beau–
tiful, would have been out of place.
As I watched "My Party" at the New Victory, I recalled what I wrote
after seeing
L'Allegro,
if
Penseroso ed
if
Moderato
for the first and, so
far, the only time:
For all its richness, there is a neat, once-over-lightly quality about
L'Allegro
that I find troubling. And Morris's lack of interest in part–
nering works against him here. To make a full-evening ballet without
a single pas de deux is a mark of great ingenuity. . .that leaves a blank
at the expressive heart of what ought to be a cathartic experience.
Perhaps I would feel the same way today. More likely, though, I was
"seeing"
L'Allegro
through the distorting glass of convention, instead of
looking at the dance itself, and I am now eager to give it-and myself–
a second chance.
Not long ago, I told another of Morris's dancers that while I admired his
work greatly, I had somehow failed to connect with
L'Allegro.
Instead of
bristling, she smiled and replied, "You'll experience it fully in the future,
never fear." Time was when
I
might have bristled at so confident a retort,
but now I know better. Mark Morris may not be perfect, but he is definitely
good enough to be given the benefit of the doubt, no matter what unlikely–
looking thing he may choose to do next; whatever it is, I'll be there, the same
way I'm there whenever Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham make a new
dance. Like them-and unlike anyone else-he is the real right thing.
