Mark Morris: Another Viewpoint
Mark Morris’s new dance piece, “Romeo and Juliet,” premiered this past weekend at Bard in upstate New York. As I noted yesterday, the evening was given a giant thumbs-down by the New York Times. One of LemonWade’s spies, however, also saw the Morris, and had quite a different reaction. This “Romeo,” the spy said, “is not without flaws. It is not one of Morris’s major works — it is not ‘L’Allegro’ — but I don’t think it should be dismissed as quickly as the Times reviewer did. One of the things that really galled me about the review was that it praised the conductor, Leon Botstein. Botstein is a terrible conductor — that’s well-known in the music world, but because he is a wonderful educator and does many wonderful things in the world he gets cut a lot of slack at the podium. ‘Romeo’ is well worth seeing anyway. It’s highly lyrical and is one of the most ballet-like things Morris has ever done.” The piece is headed next to Berkeley.
