For those convinced that contemporary dance is a mystery designed to keep them out, the work of the American Mark Morris offers a riposte. “I make it up; you watch it”, is the beginning and end of his philosophy, though he might have added ” … and listen, too”: in a world where good, live music seems to matter less and less, his dance shows are also a very smart concert ticket.
Across the two programmes Morris brought to London as part of a UK tour, we got scorching accounts of a bracing, the rarely heard Charles Ives Trio, a Beethoven cello sonata, Schumann’s glorious Quintet for piano and strings, a clutch of Schubert songs, Gershwin’s piano preludes, and Lou Harrison’s rousing, raving Grand Duo, a sort of West Coast, late-20th-century Rite of Spring for violin and single piano, though it sounded like six. What’s more, the quality is tip-top.
