NEW YORK—Mark Morris’ dancers crouch like sprinters at the starting line.
When they take off, innocent bystanders risk being flattened like Laurel Lynch, who gets bowled over in a dance called "Crosswalk."
Two premieres, including the high-spirited "Crosswalk" and the fraught duet "Jenn and Spencer," adorn the Mark Morris Dance Group’s marvelous new program, which opened on Wednesday at the Mark Morris Dance Center. Joining them is "A Wooden Tree," making its local debut, and a revival of "The Office."
All these pieces have a limpid clarity, and reveal startling inventions. This choreographer can embroider patterns endlessly from simple folk-dance steps or from a few, essential gestures. Three times out of four, he manages a surprise ending.
In the poignant "Office," from 1994, folk dancers meet an uncertain fate, summoned away by a woman with a clipboard. We don’t know if they’re headed to a deportation hearing, or if life, in its timeless way, is winnowing the herd. What makes the leaving hard is that these people, filled with innocent joy as they link hands, must depart one-by-one. Morris sharpens the scene to a point of terrible loneliness.
"A Wooden Tree," is the only dance NOT set to live music. There’s no replacing the banter of comic lyricist Ivor Cutler, who promises a medley in "good Olde English style" and then sings of frozen telegraph operators and tickling a girl’s foot as she lies on the grass. A creepy song gives a child’s-eye view of an auto accident. Another describes the mysterious devotion of two people, self-absorbed yet meeting regularly for mindless conversations over tea. They don’t know why they do it, but in our hearts we understand.
The choreography illustrates these situations with pantomime and jaunty country dances, with hooking arms, skipping steps and thigh-slapping. Guest artist Mikhail Baryshnikov is the telegraph operator tapping Morse Code on a chair.
What happens on the sidelines, however, where people hold a finger to their lips or huddle in an embrace, is as interesting as who poses in the spotlight. Michelle Yard, Aaron Loux and Dallas McMurray bring appealing gusto to the performance.
"Jenn and Spencer," named for interpreters Jenn Weddel and Spencer Ramirez, is a dance for lovers who circle warily, drawn in tight and then repelled out of orbit. Lying on the floor with their heads in opposite directions, they kick until the soles of their feet connect at a point that is equally support and resistance. They adopt noble postures, and abase themselves. Then the choreographer sets us up. Just as things seem to improve, she slaps him (wham!) and flees. The rough-edged score is by Henry Cowell.
"Crosswalk," to music by Carl Maria Von Weber, might be dismissed as slapstick if it weren’t for the brilliant traffic patterns contrasting symmetry with asymmetry, and wildness with order. Three women, dressed in orange, are harassed by eight men in T-shirts until one woman—Stacy Martorana—joins the men becoming a bright, orange dot in a white field. Noah Vinson, heading the other way, is martyred between two women.
Wiggling, tumbling and dashing by at high speed, the dancers bring this evening to a breathless conclusion. Better look both ways, before you dare step off the curb.
Robert Johnson: firstname.lastname@example.org