No time to do a review, just a very quick visit to say that, as feedback
from New York indicated, the new Mark Morris premiere, "V", is gorgeous - do
go and see it if it's being performed near you. (And I certainly
appreciated Grand Duo a lot more on a second viewing, as well).
Note for those going to Sadler's Wells - security checks are causing serious
delays, so do try and get there well ahead of the scheduled starting time.

Do get to see this if you possibly can. Musically, this is a particularly luscious evening, complemented by some terrific performances from the dancers. Morris's musical instincts are unmatched - everything is marvellously danceable, and the steps seem to have grown out of the music as naturally as breathing.

Morris himself appears in a solo, Peccadillos, set to Satie. The indefatigable music director, Ethan Iverson, plays the world's smallest, tinkliest piano onstage, while Morris himself, possibly the largest dancer to grace Sadlers Wells’ stage, sketches out a dance both whimsical, childlike and touching. He was sending himself up a little in the process but he is still lighfooted and agile with beatiful, eloquent, twirling hands.

Morris' new work, "V", suffered slightly from being seen from such a low
vantage point: to get the most from it, you really need to view it from
above, as otherwise you can't see the patterns, made by two sets of dancers
in different-coloured outfits, which are such a major element of the piece,
but it was still sheer joy. Or, more accurately, 3 movements of sheer joy
and one which was rather darker and more foreboding, with dancers proceeding
across the stage at a funereal pace, cockroach-like on all fours, reminding
me of a particular lithograph by Escher in which the animals become sharper
and more real until they manage to crawl out of the picture altogether. It
may just have been my original response to this section, but with the
dancer's bodies blocking the view to a much greater extent I wasn't struck
by the feeling of a struggle to drag themselves back from crawling to an
upright position which I had noticed when viewing the work from above. It's
one of Morris' more balletic works (it struck me that I could see English
National Ballet doing it on one of their smaller-scale tours - after all,
Matz Skoog is on record as saying that he'd like to include some Morris in
the repertoire), and also one of his most responsive to the music. I tend
not to listen to chamber music, and don't think I'd heard the Schumann piece
before, but because the choreography matched and drew such attention to the
music, even after only two hearings I feel that I known much of it virtually
note-perfect, and indeed I wonder if I shall ever be able to hear it again
without seeing the choreography in my mind's eye, so clearly is the
association imprinted on my brain. I gather it's not being toured in
Britain, but if you get a chance to see it elsewhere you should take it!