Luminato Festival – Mark Morris Dance Group’s All Fours/Violet Cavern

by Paula Citron.
__________________________
All Fours/Violet Cavern
Mark Morris Dance Group
Luminato Festival
MacMillan Theatre
Program Three runs on Sat. and Sun.
__________________________

The second Mark Morris Dance Group program at the Luminato Festival is a quintessential example of how important music is to Morris’ movement. As a choreographer, Morris is inspired by music, and his company always performs to live music.

All Fours (2003) is set to Bela Bartok’s edgy, nervous, atonal String Quartet No. 4, while the companion piece Violet Cavern (2004) uses a cool running score by the ground-breaking jazz collective The Bad Plus.

In the Bartok, Morris sees darkness and light, despair and hope, conformity and individuality.
Violet Cavern, on the other hand, comes the closest to rendering music into pure movement. The piece radiates exuberance, vitality and big city sophistication.

Morris’ goal is not merely to render music visible. He also has an innate ability to evoke theme or mood within movement while being dominated by music.

The final Luminato Mark Morris Dance Group program takes place at the MacMillan Theatre this Saturday and Sunday.