Choreographer Encourages Dance

A crowd of several hundred dance enthusiasts sat spellbound yesterday evening as legendary choreographer Mark Morris spoke about the creative process and his career in a moderated discussion at Sanders Theatre.

Arguing that dance is not an elite or exclusive art form, Morris said dance is a natural, popular and approachable art whose goal should be the appearance of “inevitability.” He said he rejected condescension in dance, unconstructive dance criticism and obscure descriptions in concert programs.

But despite his outspoken opinions, Morris—whose widely-known dance company has choreographed worldwide—refused to criticize choreographers with competing methods.

“Whatever method you want to use to make up a dance, just do it,” he said.

Speaking about his own creative process, Morris said talent is an accident requiring cooperation between music, movement, sound and sight. Each dance move, he said, simply leads him to the next move.

“It’s never an epiphany, or nearly never an epiphany. I’ll just make up a dance,” he said. “It’s not like I got hit by an art truck.”

The event, which billed itself as a conversation with Morris, invited audience interaction.

He asked for help with identifying his own performances and dances—whose venues and names he had forgotten—and gently mocked long-winded questions from audience members.

Asked to identify his favorite dance step, he said, “My favorite move? I love reclining.”

Once a controversial young troublemaker in the New York dance scene, Morris has become an icon of the dance world, working with—and celebrated by—Yo-Yo Ma ’76, George Ballanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov. While admitting the necessity of defining dance as an art in and of itself, he defended his reputation as a dancer wholeheartedly devoted to music, by contrast to other modern choreographers who have rejected the “tyranny of music.”

“I get criticism to this day that my dances are predictable, or tied to the beat,” he said. “What else would they be tied to? I’m not really sure.”

In his talk, Morris offered a simple prescription for increasing the number of people in America who dance.

“You put on some music, make sure there’s lots of drinks—and not enough chairs.”

The presentation was co-sponsored by FleetBoston Celebrity Series, the Wang Center for the Performing Arts and the Office for the Arts at Harvard’s Learning from Performers program. Former public radio host Christopher Lydon moderated the discussion.