Program:
Water (Theater premiere; 2021; music by George Frideric Handel)
Jenn and Spencer (2013; music: Henry Cowell)
Dancing Honeymoon (1998; music: arranged by Ethan Iverson)
V (2001; music: Robert Schumann)
Continuing a collaboration that dates to 1987, Mark Morris Dance Group returns to its West Coast home away from home with three distinctive works not seen on Cal Performances stages for many seasons, all of them exemplars of Morris’ supreme choreographic sensitivity to musical form and expression. Dancing Honeymoon is a frolic through pop songs past, as dancers joke and whirl about with folding chairs as props. The duet Jenn and Spencer is danced to Henry Cowell’s Suite for Violin and Piano, a work with both modernist and Baroque undertones. The dance V, an abstract and exuberant exploration of color, form, and layered textures, is set to the Piano Quintet in E-flat major by Robert Schumann.
