Mark Morris Tells Gerard Mortier He Would Rather Watch Opera

Opera Talk: Gerard Mortier [left] makes a point in discussion with Mark Morris.
(Photo: Gloria Nieto/The Globe and Mail)

"It was Mortier, in a previous incarnation as director of the Brussels opera, La Monnaie, who hired a younger Morris to replace his then outgoing director of dance, Maurice Bejart. And it was in Brussels in the late-1980s and early-1990s that Morris created several of his most famous dances, including L’Allegro, The Hard Nut, and Dido and Aeneas. That work, he later confesses, made it easier to re-establish himself in the United States. Morris’s work always begins with the music. 'What a lot of people do is make up a dance,' he explains. 'What I do, in the old-fashioned sense, is go from a piece of music that I love and imagine that I won’t tire of very soon, analyze the score, think about it, and make up a dance with my company.' He adds that he’d rather go to see opera than see dance, 'because if I’m super familiar with someone’s dance work and if I don’t like it, I don’t need to go back. And I won’t go see a three-hour ballet if it only has 10 minutes of good dancing. But I go to the Met [New York’s Metropolitan Opera] a lot.'" [Source]