DANCE REVIEW : The Return of the Brilliant Bad Boy

Mark Morris is back and, for a couple of weeks at least, New York has him. Lucky New York.

Morris has led something of a charmed life. As a Wunderkind , the dancer-choreographer has earned awe at best, respect at worst, from a startled community of instant admirers. As an enfant terrible , he has managed to delight the Establishment at which he so flamboyantly thumbs his nose.

The man is a playful provocateur and, fortunately, something of a genius. The virtues complement each other usefully.

At 35, Morris writes--and then sometimes breaks--his own rules, and does so with sublime, irresistible nonchalance. He is intensely musical, deceptively cerebral, insinuatingly sensual, fabulously funky.

He creates complex formal structures and daunting classical hurdles for his team of barefoot virtuosos. In the process, he ignores--no, destroys--standard preconceptions regarding appropriate body images. With stubbornly democratic aplomb, he devises graceful and grateful, primitive and tough unisex rituals to stretch an ensemble that embraces lugs as well as sylphs.

The only observers who have not responded positively to his iconoclasm seem to dwell in Brussels. Gerard Mortier, the noncomformist impresario now charged with revitalizing the Salzburg Festival, brought Morris to the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie three years ago to succeed Maurice Bejart. Some Belgians found the American’s abrasive bravura no substitute for the Frenchman’s extravagantly glamorous kitsch.

Much of the Brussels press and some of the public registered ongoing hostility toward Morris and his innovations. For his characteristic parting gesture, the punk mustered a dark-edged underground-comix version of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.” Set in the sexy ‘60s, it was aptly titled “The Hard Nut.” Like most valedictories, this one earned unqualified raves in all quarters, but it was too late.

“MARK MORRIS GO HOME,” a much quoted headline had screamed after a previous premiere. Now the bad boy from America was heeding the advice.

His campy Yuletide antidote to the sugar plums of Balanchine and Joffrey, not incidentally, will receive its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December. “SEE the Rat Queen’s horrible mutant offspring!” teases a cartoon in the faux comic-book flyer. “SEE the Princess that breaks a million hearts . . . and teeth!” The prospect is intriguing.

For better or worse, Morris has returned to the real world of experimental dance. In Belgium, he could count on generous governmental subsidies, easy opera-house connections and comfortable working conditions. Here, he has to do a lot of strenuous scratching, and touring, for survival.

For his much anticipated New York stand, he purposely selected an unconventional venue: the grand ballroom on the seventh floor of the Manhattan Center, a splendid Art Deco monstrosity at the site of Hammerstein’s old opera house on 34th Street.

Seats accommodating 600 were improvised in front of the proscenium arch. Deprived of a pit, the admirable Orchestra of St. Luke’s was stationed--disconcertingly--far out front, to the left of the stage.

Drinks were served in an adjacent bar an hour before performance time. Pre-show entertainment was provided by a subway musician.

Brussels was never like this.

The triumphant opening on Tuesday attracted a suitably glitzy crowd. Jerome Robbins was there. So was Peter Martins.

The 17-member company, now officially called the Mark Morris Dance Group , has never looked stronger, more disciplined, more polished. The Belgian trials have taken no apparent toll. Au contraire . . . .

The program showcased a nice mixture of staples and novelties. It opened with the first performance of “Beautiful Day,” a mercurial duet predicated on intricate balances and quirky mirror poses, inspired by Bach’s (or Georg-Melchior Hoffmann’s) “Schlage doch, gewunschte Stunde.” The second premiere took the aggressively hypnotic form of “Polka,” a circle dance in which the participants use arms as much as legs to hammer out the stark jungle rhythms--to a suitably dynamic tune by Lou Harrison.

“A Lake,” designed for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project, pointedly combined asymmetrical linear abstractions with the orderly counterpoint of Haydn’s D-major Horn Concerto. (William Purvis was the dazzling soloist.) In “Prelude and Prelude,” Morris toyed knowingly with the gentle atonality of Henry Cowell’s Set for Harpsichord and Violin, dressing his dancers--men and women alike--in black, one-piece bathing suits and giving them fans to be used as suggestive props.

“Gloria,” now something of a signature piece, served as a genuinely grand finale. The opposing visual leitmotifs--some bodies propelled in agony across the floor, others thrown in ecstasy across the stage--reinforced the basic impulses of Vivaldi’s wondrous score, sensitively conducted by Michael Feldman. Julianne Baird and Mary Westbrook-Geha sang their solos exquisitely.

Morris made his only appearance of the evening--a cheeky, suitably charismatic appearance--in “Ten Suggestions,” a bagatelle predicated on piano pieces by Alexander Tcherepnin (played with panache by Linda Dowdell). His chunky figure draped in pink silk pajamas, his measured movements dictated by the whimsical cadences of the music, he entered somersaulting. Then, without missing a smirk, he tested the dainty expressive possibilities of duets with a hoop, a chair, a hat, a ribbon and, climactically, a pair of scissors.

Morris knows what he is doing. He is, after all, a stylist as well as an illusionist. Part Isadora Duncan, part Charlie Chaplin and part Tinkerbell, he defied the viewer not to take his cumulative flights of fancy seriously.