Morris, Mark (1956-…), is an American choreographer (creator of dances) and the founder of the Mark Morris Dance Group, a modern dance company. He has created dances for many ballet companies, and also choreographed and directed operas . Morris’s work is characterized by its strong relationship to music. It also combines folk dance and everyday movement with classical dance steps. Morris’s dances often incorporate humor and have a quality of being grounded—that is, the dancers connect with their own weight and with gravity as they move in relation to their suroundings. Morris’s company is known for gender-neutral casting, and a commitment to performing with live musicians. In the early 2000’s, Morris began conducting music at some of his company’s performances.
Mark William Morris was born on Aug. 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington. As a youth, he studied ballet, flamenco dance, and Balkan folk dance. As a teenager, Morris performed with the semiprofessional Koleda Folk Ensemble in Seattle. Morris also began choreographing for local dance groups during his teenage years.
In 1976, Morris moved to New York City. During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, he studied ballet with the American ballet teacher Maggie Black and performed with several dance companies. These included the Eliot Feld Ballet, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, the Hannah Kahn Dance Company, and Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians.
Morris launched his own company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, in 1980. In 1988, Morris became the director of dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Royal Theater of the Mint), a prominent opera house in Brussels, Belgium. His company became the theater’s resident dance company. Morris’s company returned to New York in 1991. In 1996, Morris formed the MMDG Music Ensemble to perform with his company. In 2001, he opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York City, to house his company, a dance school, and community outreach programs. The center became known for its dance classes for adults and children with disabilities, and for Dance for PD, a program for people with Parkinson disease .
Morris has choreographed more than 150 works for the Mark Morris Dance Group. Some of his notable early works include Gloria (1981); New Love Song Waltzes (1982); L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato (1988); Dido and Aeneas (1989), in which he danced two female roles; The Hard Nut (1991), his nontraditional version of the Nutcracker ballet; and Grand Duo (1993). Later notable works include V (2001); Mozart Dances (2006); Words (2014); Layla and Majnun (2016); and Pepperland (2017), a celebration of the Beatles rock band. Morris has choreographed dances to a broad variety of music.
Morris has created more than 20 dances for ballet companies, including American Ballet Theatre , the Boston Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, and the Paris Opera Ballet. He has choreographed and directed for a number of opera companies, such as the Metropolitan Opera ; the New York City Opera; the English National Opera; and the Royal Opera, in London. Morris’s collaborations include projects with such noted artists as the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov . In the 1990’s, Morris cofounded the White Oak Dance Project with Baryshnikov and choreographed works for that company.
Morris has won many awards for his work, including a 1991 MacArthur Fellowship . He also has received a number of honorary doctorate degrees. Morris’s memoir Out Loud was published in 2019.
