I try to remember when I first saw Mark Morris’s dance company and what I thought of them. Fairly weird, I recall – like chubby church-goers, with their big bottoms, fleshy arms and homespun cheeriness, not remotely part of the sharp-boned, athletically wired contemporary dance that was all around. And they weren’t balletic either, despite their little village hall arabesques and occasional flying jetés. But by gum what they did was musical, and that smacked you straightaway.
The dance world is even leaner and more chicken-jointed now, and musical understanding has virtually dropped out of general existence. (Has contemporary dance and its audience ever been as unmusical as it is now?) I admit I arrived at Sadler’s Wells pretty downbeat, having been put through M25 hell and thus missed entry to his latest new work, Empire Garden. But the fact that I was so angry about missing Morris’s latest is a mark of the eager anticipation this unique American choreographer generates – wag, scatological cherub, lyric tragedian, music devotee.
