Press Release: Sadler's Wells - Mark Morris Dance Group - Two Mixed Bills featuring Seven UK Premieres

[Jan McNulty]

Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) and the MMDG Music Ensemble

Two Mixed Bills
UK Premiere
Wednesday 27 November - Sunday 1 December 2013
Performances at 7.30pm
Tickets: £12 - £38
Ticket Office: 0844 412 4300 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

“There is no other dance company so at one with its choreography and its music” Financial Times

 

One of the true masters of contemporary dance, American choreographer Mark Morris returns to Sadler’s Wells from Wednesday 27 November - Sunday 1 December with his marvelous dancers, singers and musicians in seven works never before seen in the UK, divided into two mixed bill programmes. All works are performed to live music by the Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble.

 

Programme A includes The Muir an evolution of the graceful yet powerful Cease Your Funning, featuring Irish and Scottish folk songs arranged by Beethoven; a new ensemble work Crosswalk, which premiered earlier this year; and Socrates a major new work for 15 dancers from MMDG set to Erik Satie’s score of the same title. Socrates received universal critical acclaim when it premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2010, with the New York Times calling it “simply beautiful [and] sensuously attractive”.

 

The selection for Programme B features the “charming, exhilarating” (New York Observer) Festival Dance, a new duet Jenn and Spencer which premiered at the Mark Morris Dance Center earlier this year; set the to the music of Samuel Barber, the piano-accompanied sextet Excursions; and A Wooden Tree, set to recordings by the Scottish poet Ivor Cutler.

 

Morris formed his dance company in 1980, since then he has created close to 150 works. Much in demand as a ballet choreographer, Morris has created eighteen ballets since 1986. Music director for the 2013 Ojai Music Festival, he also works extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, English National Opera and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, among others.

 

In recent years, he has received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2007), the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society (2010), the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity (2012) and Cal Performances Award of Distinction in the Performing Arts (2013).

 

Notes to Editors:

 

Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG)

Internationally renowned as one of the world’s leading dance companies, the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) has inspired critics and audiences alike throughout its 30-year-plus history. Founded in New York in 1980 by artistic director/choreographer Mark Morris, MMDG has been called “the preeminent modern dance organization of our time” (Yo-Yo Ma), receiving “highest praise for their technical aplomb, their musicality, and their sheer human authenticity.” (Bloomberg News). MMDG spent three years in residence at Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie as Belgium’s national dance company, returning to the United States in 1991. The Dance Group is distinguished as the only modern dance company with a deep commitment to live music in performance, founding the MMDG Music Ensemble in 1996. Outreach is interwoven into every aspect of the Company’s life, both at its Brooklyn home, the Mark Morris Dance Center, as well as on tour through its Access/MMDG programming.  The company brings opportunities for dance, music, talks, and education around the world, from an in-school residency with school-age children to Dance for PD®, which offers teacher training and free classes for people with Parkinson’s disease. The Mark Morris Dance Center offers affordable dance classes, workshops, and master classes for adults of all skill levels, as well as subsidized rehearsal space for the dance community. The School at the Mark Morris Dance Center additionally provides low-cost dance classes to over 1200 children and teens ages 3 to 17, all accompanied by live music.

 

About Mark Morris

Mark Morris has been hailed as the ““the most prodigiously gifted choreographer of the post-Balanchine era” (Time magazine).  Since founding MMDG in 1980, Morris has created close to 150 works for the company. He has been described as “an innovator and a conservative, a satirist and a romantic” (New Yorker) who “easily ranks among the top five living American choreographers” (The Denver Post). Morris is also much in demand as a ballet choreographer.  His works have been commissioned by San Francisco Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre, among others. An intensely musical choreographer, Morris is the first choreographer to be named music director of the Ojai Music Festival (2013); he has conducted performances for MMDG since 2006 and has also worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing at the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, among others. He is a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and has received eleven honorary doctorates to date.  In recent years, he has received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2007), the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society (2010), the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity (2012) and the Cal Performances Award of Distinction in the Performing Arts (2013).