The wit and wisdom of Mark Morris
Even more important to the art form was the need to fight the humourlessness of minimalism and conceptualism in the aftermath of the 1970s — “it was enough already”.
“Contemporary dance is happy to perform for itself and that’s something that bothers me,” he counters. “If you are successful you are the equivalent of Walt Disney. It’s as if you are automatically not doing serious work. How dare you assume that your audience is that shallow?
“Absolutely there have been charges of selling out made against me. I work in institutions like San Francisco Ballet and you are not supposed to do that. But I didn’t start working with Yo-Yo Ma because I’m a starf***er and I thought he would be good for getting customers.
“Modern dance doesn’t have to be for everybody. If your work was better, more people would come and see it. And yes, I am living proof of that. People wanted to see my work and I satisfied them in some way.”
“Everybody always focuses on the freak-show part of my company,” Morris explains. “She’s so short, she has such big tits, he’s African-American, they’re so old. Come on. They are real people.
“Yes, I once called ballet dancers ‘dead virgins’ because they are groomed that way, like veal in a cage. They are not allowed to really grow up or have an opinion or menstruate or eat. So how can you dance if you can’t do the things that you have to do? Happily that’s diminishing now, it’s a lot better, but it still happens.”
