I like L’Allegro best when the compositional patterns evolve. One long sequence at the end of Part I morphs from a throne-room procession to a grand-right-and-left to a mini square dance for six quartets, and on to more inventions that fulfill the poet’s view of an excursion on a sunny day.
I like it least when the dancers pretend to be trees and hunting dogs, or imitate the moon or a fireplace.
Occasionally a word would crystallize out of the gorgeous weave of music, but mostly I couldn’t make out the text. Milton’s high-Renaissance rhetoric (“Hence, loathèd Melancholy,/of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born . . . ,” it begins) scans best on the page. Just the inkling of its noble sentiments makes the dance imposing enough anyway.
Related:
Double or nothing, L’Allegro, fuss and feathers, and the ICA blues, Mostly Mark, More 
- Double or nothing
The American premiere of Dido took place here in Boston, at the Majestic Theatre in June 1989.
- L’Allegro, fuss and feathers, and the ICA blues
This year we were looking forward to dance performances at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater in the new ICA.
- Mostly Mark
Mark Morris has worked with the Mostly Mozart Festival before, but this year’s commission from the 40-year-old summer music series posed a large-scale challenge, a full evening of new work.
- Altar and ego
Mark Morris’s Dido and Aeneas
- Dido's fate
Henry Purcell might not have approved Mark Morris’s contemporary take on Dido and Aeneas, but he probably would have recognized it for its formality and anti-naturalism.
- Grand finales
Jeffrey Rink has just ended his 18th and final season as music director of Chorus pro Musica. He’ll be missed.
- Modern romantics
Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare is less of a statement than a supposition: what if we did it a different way?
- Midsummer madness
After a relatively quiet summer, I saw Boston Midsummer Opera's Cosí fan tutte at BU's Tsai Center. Then I raced out to Tanglewood for a Mark Morris program accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, a BSO matinee with Ma, and all six concerts in the annual Festival of Contemporary Music.
- Hit and miss
Boston Ballet didn’t need Mark Morris’s blessing in 1999, and it doesn’t need it now.
- Lightweights
Two of Boston’s major dance series wound up their 2006–2007 season last week with low-calorie desserts.
- Making it new
The avant-garde ain’t what it used to be.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Music, Craig Smith, More
, Entertainment, Music, Craig Smith, Dance, Performing Arts, William Blake, Mark Morris, George Frideric Handel, Dance Reviews, Wang Center, Less
