Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer by Stephanie Jordan is unusual in many ways, and there are hardly any volumes to which it can be compared. That alone sets this study apart from other recent titles on choreographers and their works. Jordan's book was published by Dance Books; yet, it is about music more than anything else—a choreographer's relationship to music, his formation and evolution as a dancer and dancemaker through music, the exploration of music through dance, and eventually Mark Morris's arrival in music as a conductor.

The first sentence of the introduction is a quotation that defines the whole study: “Choreographer Mark Morris … has done more to revive interest in, to dignify and illuminate classical music to a broad audience than any conductor or musician in the last twenty years” (1).Footnote ¹ This remarkable statement concerns a fundamental musical relationship. Jordan takes it very seriously and, from the first page on, explores movement only in the context of music. Dance Studies, following modernist choreography and performance conceptions, carries a heavy burden and has taken great pains to define itself against all other fields, particularly musicology. Jordan's book concerns itself with an artist who defies such predominant relationships and turns them back: dance is music or about music.

Jordan became interested in Morris's perception of music when she interviewed him for her book Stravinsky Dances. She places him in the company of George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton and notes that Morris's approach to music has much more in common with ballet than with modern dance: he cherishes music and does not see it as some kind of recorded afterthought to a piece of choreography. Nor does music represent the element that has to submit to movement, never determining the way a dance work evolves. Morris defies conventions as a choreographer of modern dance with a modern dance ensemble in that he has been integrated into and acknowledged by the music establishment, opera houses, music festivals, and radio. He has made about eighteen ballets as well as operatic works. There is no other modern choreographer who has paid so much attention to operatic and balletic stage works.

Jordan is well-known for her analysis of the music-dance partnership. In this study, she manages to be dance historian, dance theoretician, and musicologist. That combination has become quite unusual, yet it is necessary to address Morris's work. Again, owing to the modernist legacy, the music-movement dynamics have become much more questionable than, say, the literature-movement interaction. Today, few choreographers would deem a literary source or literary theory something that shackles movement; yet, music has suffered that fate.

Jordan's extensive investigation is structured into three parts. Part 1 investigates “Context.” It provides insights into Morris's career, his approach to performance as process and practice, and the classification of his works. Here Jordan also uses the term “choreomusical” in conjunction with “concepts,” “mobility,” “motifs,” “tactics,” and the formulation of “music visualisation” (75–83). Part 2 establishes her own framework of analysis through watching dance and listening to the music. Part 3 analyzes Morris and his choreographies and establishes three periods—the 1980s, the early 1990s, and the years up to 2014. Every decade, argues Jordan, brings about some new and significant insight and performance approach.

In part 1, Jordan proceeds from a historical overview that places the life of Morris into the cultural fabric of the United States: he emerged from the West Coast of the United States and moved into the larger world. Some of the insights from his earlier life are revealing. As an adolescent, Morris learned Spanish, Hawaiian, jazz, ballroom and Russian dancing as well as fencing. Is this the expression of a democratic cultural attitude? Can all the different strands of traditions be merged into something artistically new? These are important questions in regard to Morris's oeuvre and the ways he uses historical, ethnic, religious, and folkloric sources. Jordan invites us to think about how Morris enlivens and represents such diverse sources and how the resulting aesthetic is forged and goes on to define a relationship to the past as well as the present. Some people might think that true democracy materializes out of the exploration and exploitation of as many cultural elements as possible. Yet, Gore Vidal warned of this attitude: “If everything and everyone is of equal value, then any wordFootnote ² is as good as any other … to express a meaning, which in turn is no more valuable than any other meaning. Or to put it another way, if everyone is equally valuable … why attempt selection? This sort of writing … I call demotic” (Vidal Reference Vidal1974, 97). The “demotic” misunderstands choice and evades accountability. Vidal did not articulate a mere personal distaste (though that too), but rather issued a warning that art needs to use traditions carefully and responsibly. Certain postmodern strands of thought and practice have cultivated this “demotic” choice, this randomness of aesthetic integration, and in many cases this stance has led to artistic and political irresponsibility.

That characteristically “demotic” American attitude characterized Morris's upbringing—open to available influences (often dependent on coincidence) that were acquired unsystematically. Morris was exposed to music halls, on the one hand, and joined a dance group that practiced Balkan (Romanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian) folk dances, on the other. Whether or not Morris has any Balkan heritage was of little importance; he enjoyed the group. Even if we leave aside that it could be seen as unconventional to throw together Romanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian traditions, traditions considered distinct and separate from one another, there is another oddity: this is not about the stage perception of folk dance. Folk dance is taken more seriously as a source in its own right, as a source for understanding “ordinary people” (23). But who are the “ordinary people?” It seems to this reviewer that Morris misunderstands the meaning of folk art and music: they are supposed to establish a national identity—not of ordinary but of special people. Such national group identity cannot be acquired simply by dancing. More is needed, above all the internalization of traditions in order to build a specific, that is, a national, identity that is always exclusive. Morris does not seem to have been overly concerned with the historical legacy of national identities, danced or developed otherwise, and he used all these exercises as opportunities to develop his muscles, which he did with great enthusiasm. At some point, though, this folk aesthetic with its specific “look, logic and rhythmic foundation” (23) must have clashed with the formal properties of baroque or classical musical compositions. That is not mentioned, nor is the question raised as to how that whole idiosyncratic, eclectic mix was a helpful basis for composition.

Morris's instruction in modern dance read as accidental as does most of his other aesthetic education. He learned some Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan, and José Limon techniques, often in summer camp. That means that Morris obtained a broad foundation of diverse styles, traditions, principles, and methods in dance and music. According to Jordan, he managed to merge all of his experiences into an extraordinary and distinct performance attitude and create his very own artistic style. The public success he has enjoyed certainly confirms her claims.

The first Mark Morris Dance Group was founded in 1980. Looking back, Jordan argues that Morris managed to focus on specific approaches and that the above-mentioned hodgepodge was an important inspiration rather than the guiding impulse behind his hybrid aesthetic. He settled on a preference for music that Jordan calls baroque as well as for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music and for some contemporary (particularly American twentieth-century) compositions (29). In the end, it was musical preference, not fencing or dance from Tahiti, that defined Morris's attitude to art and performance. Yet, immediately after offering this overview and selection, Jordan reopens the frame to add that Morris moved beyond the classical canon, also integrating country western, popular Indian and Thai culture, traditional Romanian, and, yes, Tahitian songs. But then she notes that the popular cultures were also abandoned at some point. According to Joan Acocella (whose writings Jordan clearly admires), Morris composed at least two pieces to baroque music per year. Music from that period seems to have become one of his musical preferences and with it also came the debates of how to perform early music. Authenticity, period instruments, text/score accuracy, and historical truthfulness are only a few of the catchwords that dominated the discourse about how to correctly play music by Bach, Handel, or their contemporaries.Footnote ³ Morris found his way around and through these arguments and solidified his musical choices. But did he question his movement and choreographic preferences as well? Is “authenticity” relevant? Did Morris consider the body as a historically evolved entity that felt differently at different times and whose sensory equipment was never stable?

Vidal's characterization of the demotic points to the confusion over democracy as nonselective and all-accepting. This is relevant here, as Morris not only grew up with such an outlook but created a demotic type of dance. Jordan would never call Morris's attitude by such a name; “demotic” is far too negative and judgmental a word. Jordan prefers not to judge; she admires and approves of Morris's choices. Her fairness is admirable; her careful assessments are meticulously researched and validated, her research outstanding. This is a book that can be read as the narrative of one person's path to fame, but can also be used as a kind of encyclopedia. It offers so much analytical detail and pointed insight that it is hard to imagine that another study on Morris is either necessary or possible in the near future.

Jordan often speaks of collaboration though every performance piece requires it on the most basic level. Even the solo performer needs a performance space maintained by somebody else, with lighting or costume design. But Jordan usually refers to musical interactions. She mentions many celebrated names, that of the late conductor Christopher Hogwood, pianist Emmanuel Ax, or cellist Yo-Yo Ma. It is as though these names give credence to the choreographer as musician, not the choreographer as choreographer. For Jordan they seem to prove that Morris really is the musician he wants to be, recognized and validated by other musicians. On the other hand, Jordan writes that “collaboration … has often been overstated” and had become a kind of myth and that it is much easier to work with “dead” people's works because there exists much less pressure (57). “With existing music, there is more time for un-pressured intensive private study” (57). Even though he has worked with contemporary composers, Morris has most often taken the safe route of using a score by a dead person in the way he wants, without interference of its creator. Here again is Morris's bent toward music that Jordan carefully records. What about the collaboration with dancers? But all these are still preliminary remarks or insights that do not touch upon the actual claim: is Mark Morris the outstanding artist whose advocate Jordan has become? Is Morris really the most unusual, most successful, most unconventional, experimental, and imaginative choreographer and musician of our time, with his concept of “rude muscularity” and “voluptuous fleshiness?” (2), both influenced or even derived from his own “big Baroque body.”Footnote ⁴

This question brings us to the concept of process and practices of Morris's performances. Jordan states that information about the “working processes of choreographers is rarely documented systematically,” which seems somewhat misguided (63). The modern dance culture of the twentieth century has brought about an excess of programs, intentions, practices, self-observations, revelations, theories and their endless interpretations as well as methods and their infinite explorations. Morris can hardly be unusual in capturing scholarly attention and “precise and detailed” analyses. Has Morris developed new methods in choreography and performance? Morris has shifted toward music as the guiding principle in his dance works. That goes against the modernist grain. But the method was there before him; Morris is merely recapturing a relationship and redefining it in favor of sound rather than movement. The passages on process and practices make abundantly clear, once more, how vital the musical choice is for the choreography. It makes clear that Morris conceptualizes movement through music. The comments made by participating musicians and the analyses of musical works substantiate these approaches. With this consistent focus on music, this reader wonders what role movement plays at all; it is portrayed as secondary and growing out of the performance of music and the musical score. But is there nothing else? Morris creates a sound world as a physical space that is then inhabited by people moving. And, according to Jordan, he has helped musicians access the physical dimension of music.

For Jordan, this method equates to a postmodern understanding of history. She explains Morris's work in postmodern terms of “choreomusical history” and “music visualisation” and connects him to Yvonne Rainer who started to use the terms in the 1960s (83, 127). Morris built and still builds on the experiences associated with “minimalism, pedestrian movement and systematic formal tendencies that encourage the viewer's self-conscious awareness: distancing, discursive enterprise tied to commentary upon the basic nature of dance” as well as music (75). In addition, “bricolage and radical juxtaposition of diverse images and representations,” together with an ironic stance, characterize Morris's approach to choreography. Whether or not Morris is committed to such postmodern positions remains a point of disagreement, says Jordan. But it is of importance in the context of developing these principles together with a postmodern understanding of music that ranges from translation to visualization of music. But here Jordan leaves out important historical developments. Music visualization, sometimes linked to synesthetic properties, was tried out in the early twentieth century by Alexander Scriabin, Mikalojus Ciurliunis, Vasily Kandinsky, and Arnold Schönberg in a philosophical context that addressed cosmic and existential questions. In these cases, music was to evoke or represent color and create a different type of physical space, a space not of predominantly bodily movement but achieved by the amalgamation of sound and light waves. The Russian-Soviet choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov, whose writings Jordan edited and whom she mentions, would have seen himself in these traditions, not only in those of Duncan or Jaques-Dalcroze who developed very different relationships between movement and music; Morris seems not to associate with either (80).

In the second part and Chapter 4 we encounter Jordan's “framework for analysis,” methodologies that follow Morris's musical exegeses and address two aspects, namely, the technical and that of meaning. The first is achieved through the establishment of analytical categories and criteria. The second is difficult to capture, particularly if the artist is not forthcoming and the work is so multidimensional that many meanings can be derived from it. (But that would happily fit the postmodern model of no meaning is meaningful or any meaning is as good as any other—the demotic as postmodern random heterogeneity.)

At the beginning, Jordan hopes that the reader will enter into a “strong, direct engagement” with Morris's works (11). At the same time, she notes that Morris never divulged meaningful elucidations of his choreographies in the many interview she conducted. Jordan does not want to settle on meaning either. Her analyses are technical and tend to evade an evaluation. Can dance or movement have meaning beyond itself? That, too, became a trope of the early twentieth-century debate in modern dance, when meaning centered on the self of the artist. No narrative could guide the viewer and the “absoluteness” of dance made interpretation difficult and dependent on the artist's utterances. Morris's refusal to give precise advice on what his dances mean is hardly unusual. Most artists recommend to look at or listen to the work of art; meaning might divulge itself through the process of engagement. The work of art is the meaning. That is the conclusion one has to draw from Morris's interjections and public statements. An interesting contradiction emerges: Morris, as Jordan emphasizes often in the book, informs himself, studies and reads much literature on the musical composition. He seeks meaning in scholarly texts that explain the score or the historical context of a specific musical work to him. Yet he, as the artist, does not want to do that for his own choreography. Or does he expect that his audience undergo the same process of study to inform itself in the way he did when he tackled the music? Jordan's study stands out through its attempts to prove through detailed analysis how Morris's precision in reading a musical score translates into making movement that is relevant for music as well as in itself. Such close reading of music, she suggests, makes possible a close reading of movement. In other words, the ability to analyze music leads to the ability to analyze dance and correlate choreographic detail. By extension one can then interpret and create meaning. Stephanie Jordan manages to make that connection. Her close reading of musical detail translates into detailed description of what happens on stage. Part 3 focuses on the dances Morris created and it attests to Jordan's skill in close reading of the musical score as well as the choreography derived from music (126–477).

Throughout the study, Jordan makes the following assumptions: there is always a relationship between music and dance that is in some way managed or defined; we tend to want to find patterns and coherence in both art forms and in the relationship into which they enter as that becomes the foundation of meaning. Jordan also notes that dance has appropriated musical categories for its own analytical schemes, such as rhythm, form, dynamics, texture, pitch, articulation, timbre, energy, or semantic concerns. Dance and music shape this relational meaning through their interactions. Here too, Jordan follows Morris in the assumption that dance and movement are dependent on and should be circumscribed by music. Jordan observes that Morris had his focus set on music and believed in “musical superiority” (15). Should we conclude that all the choreographic work was merely preliminary and a kind of dress rehearsal for the musical side of the performance? Indirectly, Jordan affirms this and offers the most precise and sensitive analyses of dance works through their engagement with the musical score.

Morris ventured into choreography by defying the modernist demand of independence and absolute autonomy of movement. His stance is fundamentally an antimodernist position. The turn toward ballet as a performance aesthetic arising out of the relationship to the musical composition is therefore very logical. Throughout Jordan's study, dance and movement themselves become embodiments of musical conceptions. Jordan has systematized and categorized Morris's relationship to music, organizing his works into “process and practice” of movement as music (63). Her thoughts, inspired by watching and listening to Morris in rehearsal and on stage, form the core of her analytical method. She speaks of a “multi-stranded theoretical base” that is a toolbox, “ready for selective use” (91). Neither “music” nor “dance” are stable categories for Jordan, and their flexibility and constant dynamic re-formation force her to look at each piece separately. These analytical sections are highly informative, very knowledgeable, and marvelously researched. Jordan employs a range of interactions of art with music, and they form an idiosyncratic net of possibilities for the reader to take up, exploit, or discard. That is a strength as well as a weakness of the analysis. We find a cross section of theories that cover the ages as well as the conceptual terrains: from Hanns Eisler's film music essay with his question-answer/affirmation-negation/appearance-essence dialectic, to Claudia Gorbman's concept of “mutual implication,” to Michel Chion's “transsensorial perception” to Deleuze and Guattari's “deterritorialization” (93–94). There are many more theories that Jordan mentions and applies. These theories do not necessarily complement one another. They are so distinct and developed under such different historical configurations that a methodological interaction occasionally appears forced and unconvincing. And some theories are very absent, for example, the philosophical-musical investigation on what constitutes musical material that shaped many decades of discourse in the twentieth century. Here fundamental questions were asked: how do the categories of material, space, time, idea, and sound interact and how do they create meaning as a musical composition? Eisler's film essay (93) was one important part of this debate, which was recently revisited by Gunnar Hindrichs (Reference Hindrichs2014), for instance. A methodologically tighter orientation toward such a philosophy might have helped Jordan to evade the problem of an accidental series of theories that cannot interact because of the disparateness of their categories. Nevertheless, the examples are in themselves beautifully laid out and thoroughly explicated. Jordan's notion of “capture,” for instance, is made particularly relevant in the analysis of the shifts and changes in orchestration in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker and the parallel observations of how the choreography responds (107). This and similar passages are wonderful in their clarity and awareness, as is Jordan's reference to the much more old-fashioned “counterpoint” in the discussion of the use of the flute and the trumpet in L'Allegro and her explanation of how differently movement answers to sound here (213).

Some of the most fascinating illuminations appear in Chapter 7 regarding the “danced opera” Dido and Aeneas by Purcell. Morris connected the early practices of opera to those of the twentieth century. Singing, in the very early period of opera, was being driven by human bodies. Text, music, and dance did not form one inextricable mixture but a much more complex web of mutually influenced yet discreet elements. Morris took the bold step to banish the singers from the stage and replace them with dancers. Music was thus condensed to instrumental music and expressed in the whole human body rather than just the voice. Jordan investigates the opposition as well as the complementation of movement to words and sound. The beauty of the analysis again lies in the detailed account and the meticulous interpretation of the individual scenes. The entire third and most substantial section of the book is a close reading of the works that Morris created throughout the three periods that Jordan suggests. We are taken through choreographies made during his time in Brussels (1988–1991). The emphasis lies on the comparison of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker to Morris’ Hard Nut, his last enterprise in Belgium.

Finally, we enter into the last phase, that of 1992 to 2014, and Morris's return to the United States, where other operas and ballets are revived. Jordan focuses on the new choreomusical relationship between music and dance. She had initially broken down a choreomusical interaction for each individual work into “equivalents” (92f.): rhythm and form, dynamic texture, pitch contour, staccato and legato articulation, timbre, and energy pattern (92). They contribute to structural and semantic concerns that, according to Jordan, “are inextricably connected, though emphasis shifts” (93). Through the “dynamic interaction” (93) of music and dance, whether standing in opposition, juxtaposition, or congruence, Jordan wants to arrive at a deeper understanding of body-based sensual phenomena and “the crucial issue of embodiment” (93). From 1992 onward, Morris focused on operatic works and ballets, works with strong plots and narratives that define this era, with ballets such as Sylvia or Romeo and Juliet. Then there are the opera productions, of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1988, 1996, 2007), Rameau's Plat ée (1997), and Purcell's King Arthur (2006). These were stagings in a more conventional sense; the argument that we encounter new approaches is not entirely convincing, all the more so because those productions were greeted by a number of critics as “conservative” (287). If anything, Morris seems to have turned to an even more music-orientated understanding of movement, and it is difficult to sense anything new. Rather, his integration into the music “industry” has forced or enticed him to become less experimental and more conformist. Popularity is usually paid for by toning down the extremes of experiments and submitting to the general taste of the nonoffensive and demotic. It is impossible to list or do justice to the fine work that Jordan has undertaken in presenting and re-presenting these compositions, these “big stories” of opera and ballet (287).

If the music-movement relationship drives the research, this book also poses another interesting question, and Jordan is too modest to raise it. She acknowledged throughout the book her gratitude to Morris, his generosity in giving her his time, opening archives or inviting her into the rehearsal space and providing access to any resources she needed. That was indeed kind of him. And though he would not have known whether the research result would be to his liking, such a thorough study can only benefit any artist. Jordan took, still takes, Morris very seriously. He is now a middle-aged man, very well-known, integrated into the music industry, and very much in demand. But fame will not last. A book on him might last longer, though. Jordan wrote under constructive conditions, but Morris also got something invaluable that will outlast his present visibility and status. The ephemerality of performance will, at some point, make Morris disappear from the short-lived memory of today. And then there will be Jordan's book on Morris.

Jordan mentions in the introduction that the initial problem for her lay in the attempt to maintain a critical distance between herself and the celebrated artist. That problem, she says, dissipated. Morris was a generous and noninterfering partner in this seven-year research project. He allowed access to archival material and rehearsals and was ready to talk to her when she needed it. What are the ethics of interaction in such a case? Jordan worked on Stravinsky and Balanchine, and both were dead when she wrote her extensive books on their artistic relationship.

There are no indications that conflict arose or that Jordan doubted Morris's information. She calls discrepancies in presentations or discussion “inconsistencies” yet comes to the conclusion that they are due to different perspectives, that is, different personal conclusions (7). Contradiction can bring about a positive dynamic of questioning, a kind of Hegelian dialectic. I occasionally missed that awareness. Admiration and criticism are not mutually exclusive, but they can sit uncomfortably with each other. The accusation easily arises that one diminishes the other. A stronger sense of such a critical dialectic might have strengthened Jordan's analyses.

After reading this volume, several puzzles remain: Morris was not musically trained in the “conventional way”; yet, he was fascinated by the “formal emphasis of music, its traditional tendencies toward the systematic, abstract and ‘mathy’” (16). He plays the piano, easily sight-reads, and occasionally composes, but all as an amateur (16). Morris undertakes extensive research on every new piece of music with which he will engage—does he do that with dance as well?

There are many “ifs” in regard to Morris's musical ambitions, as becomes clear in a remark by pianist Ax: “If he played the piano he'd be one of the great pianists of the world” (17). Or: “He probably would have been a fabulous conductor if he weren't a dancer.” The problem is, Morris is not a pianist and only recently transformed himself into a conductor. Such remarks are disconcerting. Rather than affirming Morris's greatness, they point to his unfulfilled desires. The most problematic of Morris's attitudes Jordan could not address: during the discussion of her book he declared that he has lost interest in dance: “I like music so much more than I like dancing … but a big cheque would get anything.”Footnote ⁵ The Mark Morris of this book is a dominant and dominating figure. Time will tell whether Jordan gave an accurate assessment that he is one of the greatest choreographers and musicians working at the present time.