Mark Morris

Mark William Morris (born August 29, 1956) is an American dancer, choreographer and director whose work is acclaimed for its craftsmanship, ingenuity, humor, and at times eclectic musical accompaniments.

Morris is popular among dance aficionados, the music world, as well as mainstream audiences.

Morris grew up in Seattle, Washington, in a family that appreciated music and dance and nurtured his budding talents; his father Joe taught him to read music and his mother Maxine introduced him to flamenco and ballet.

Joe was a high school teacher while Maxine cared for the children at home.

Morris had two older sisters, Marianne and Maureen.

Everyone in his family were performers, playing instruments, singing in chorus, and dancing.

In grade school Morris's neighborhood population changed, with many Black and Asian families moving in, and many white families moving out, with exceptions such as the Morrises.

This led to flourishing art from many different cultures, including a Japanese Bon Odori festival, as well as a Samoan dance ensemble at Morris's high school, influencing Morris's later interest in dance cultures outside of Western dance.

He began Spanish dance training with Verla Flowers at age eight.

Flowers also introduced Morris to ballet, which was considered an effeminate art form even then.

He also participated in a folk dance group, the Koleda Folk Ensemble, for many years of his childhood, which is said to have had a profound effect on his later choreography.

Throughout Morris's childhood he experienced discrimination for appearing effeminate, which contributed to much of his later choreography.

Koleda had a variety of sexual identities and orientations, which is why it was so important to him.

By age 14 he had choreographed his first modern piece, and by 15 his first ballet piece.

When Morris was 16, his father died.

His father's death and their relationship contributed to Morris's later piece Dad’s Charts.

After graduating from high school, Morris moved to Madrid to study flamenco with the goal of becoming a Spanish dancer, and briefly toured with the Royal Chamber Ballet of Madrid.

He returned home to Seattle after five months, having experienced ongoing discrimination in Spain for being gay.

He then trained for a year and a half with Perry Brunson, formerly of the Joffrey Ballet.

He then moved to New York at 19 to begin his career as a choreographer.

Once in New York he danced with choreographers Eliot Feld, Lar Lubovitch, Laura Dean and Hannah Kahn.

By 1980 he launched his company with ten dancers.

On November 28, 1980, Morris got together a group of his friends and put on a performance of his own choreography and called them the Mark Morris Dance Group.

For the first several years, the company gave just two annual performances—at On the Boards in Seattle, Washington, and at Dance Theater Workshop in New York.

In 1984 he was invited to The American Dance Festival as part of the young choreographers and composers program.

In 1986, the company was featured on the nationally televised Great Performances – Dance in America series on PBS.

In 1988, Morris was approached by Gerard Mortier, then the head of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels.

Mortier needed a replacement when Maurice Béjart, who had held the position of Director of Dance for over 20 years, suddenly left and took his company with him.

After seeing the Mark Morris Dance Group give one performance, Mortier offered Morris the position.

His company, from 1988 to 1991, became the Monnaie Dance Group Mark Morris, the resident company at la Monnaie where Morris was given well-equipped offices and studios; full health insurance for him, his staff and dancers; an orchestra and chorus at his disposal; and one of the great stages of Europe on which to dance.

In 1990, Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov established the White Oak Dance Project.

He continued to create works for this company until 1995.

In 1995, Morris choreographed a work for 14 dancers called World Power. For this work, Morris drew inspiration from a piece of text by Mark Twain in which Twain expresses his thoughts on the U.S. invasion of the Philippines in 1899, 65 years before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution heralded the United States' deepening involvement in Vietnam.

The work is set to Lou Harrison's gamelan, trumpet and chorus work In Honor of Mr. Handel and In Honor of Mark Twain.

In "Homage to the Pacifica", Harrison included the following passage by Twain:

''We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them, destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots: subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

And so, by these Providences of God—and the phrase is the government’s, not mine—we are a World Power.''

In addition to using traditional Indonesian gamelan music, Morris studied Indonesian dance, Indonesian puppet theater (wayang kulit) and traditional Javanese court dances, such as the bedhaya and serimpi, extensively borrowing movements, formation patterns and hand gestures from the dances for this work.

The music is largely Asian and includes instruments such as the bamboo flute, metallophone and bronze pot gongs.

Due to its strong political message of American and Western imperialism and explicit lyrics and choreography depicting violence against/conquering of indigenous people, World Power is seen as one of Morris's more controversial pieces.