Modern artists, unlike the majority of their forerunners, seem to be terrified of real emotion. Hence, there is a tendency to deadpan, especially among the young generation of artists; or to be condescending toward older art. This is true particularly of the popular arts (the fifties, notably, seem to be a ripe ground for plucking). The result is a lack of fresh and original work. Most modern art seems to be a commentary on other art, forever removed.
A perfect example of this is the dancer and choreographer Mark Morris, specifically the Dido and Aeneas he brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The Morris piece, a “rethinking” of the Henry Purcell opera, was the second in BAM's truncated opera season, the first being the Theatre de la Monnaie's production of Mozart's early opera La Fina Giardiniera, which can serve perfectly as a point of comparison. Both hailed from Brussels where Morris' reputation as the Bad Boy of Dance has flowered in profusion.
Focus on Morris
Morris' Dido and Aeneas is more about Mark Morris than it is about Purcell's glorious work. Fair enough. It is also not about Dido and Aeneas; it's about Mark Morris and how clever he is - and how superior he is to the material. From Morris' mouth to God's ear?
Purcell's hour-long opera, written from a libretto by Nahum Tate, is one of opera's first “grand” works. Though the physical scale is limited, the emotions in Dido and Aeneas are big, passionate, and expansive, not to mention intense. Dispossessed of her homeland, Dido, the Queen of Carthage, falls in love with Aeneas, the wandering Trojan hero. Having broken her vow of chastity, made in memory of her dead husband, she redeems herself by a noble suicide.
In the Morris performance the singers of the opera proper raise their voices from the orchestra pit with conductor Nicholas McGegan and his small band of players while Morris Monnaie Dance Group disports itself on the stage. Disports is not a carelessly chosen word here. The androgynous members of the Monaie begin by what appears to be “vogue-ing” (the dance craze popularized by pop-diva Madonna), striking stark poses, like a parody of early Martha Graham dancers, in their dark-blue costumes, which are comprised of tunics and, androgynously, sarongs for both men and women.
Morris, of course, the soul of androgyny himself, has elected to take on the diva role of Dido. Why, is anyone's guess. Other than suggesting that Dido's emotions are not restricted to women (which we already knew), a man playing a queen is pointless - unless there's an in-joke there somewhere. What the role reversal becomes is an excuse for a send-up - a burlesque of the feelings Purcell so poignantly brought to life in his music.
The body sculpture created by Morris' choreography (chorus friezes are very popular with him) remarked on the action of the opera without ever becoming part of it. Any emotion was kept at bay. It lacked drama. Only when Morris, who, sad to say, looked like a rather earnest and pathetic drag queen, camped it up, say by shimmying his shoulders, did the piece come to life. Oh, it was moderate fun to watch the group do the witches and sailors scenes (the variations on the hornpipe were amusing), but otherwise the movement made a mockery of the
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