Mark Morris Is Pulling the Strings, but His Pieces Don’t Always Jump

At 44, Mark Morris is the great puppet master of American modern dance.

With their arms and legs flicked out in literal complement to the musical pulse, his dancers invariably seem to be jerked through his choreographies by an unseen hand--marionettes on a string. As long as their manipulation reflects his inexhaustible cleverness, the result remains delightful. But when he turns serious, Morris-dance can be insufficient and unsatisfying.

Dominated by piano ballets, a five-part program by his company at UCLA on Friday illustrated the appeal and limitations of Morris’ style. For creative freshness, nothing beat the oldest work: “Canonic 3/4 Studies” from 1982. Set to an assortment of waltzes, it unleashed a nonstop barrage of inventive and often unorthodox ways for nine dancers to emphasize the waltz beat: slumping, falling, crawling; hands held up and then flung down; even a soloist repeatedly stumbling as a growing assortment of her colleagues watched in mock dismay.

By 1998, this approach had hardened into the jokey, predictable method that shaped “Dancing Honeymoon,” set to vintage pop songs originally recorded by Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan but here performed by Eileen Clark and a piano trio.

Where the earlier work seemed genuinely imaginative, this one proved largely reflexive, applying familiar Morris procedures to new accompaniments. As usual with his works to vocal music, you could expect constant gestural reinforcement of the lyrics: wing-fluttering in “Two Little Bluebirds,” for instance, or imaginary sipping in “A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You.”

Offsetting all the illustrative pantomime and broad show-dance parody: Morris’ deft use of metal folding chairs as dance platforms and choreographic fulcrums. Still, his piece never attained the richness of pop suites by Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor that have as much fun with old songs, but also evoke the times in which they were composed without the smugness so impenetrable here.

However nothing at Royce Hall on Friday looked as hollow as Morris’ newest ensemble piece, “Sang-Froid,” set to Chopin and thus inevitably measuring him and his puppet manipulation skills against two of the great exponents of expressive dance in the 20th century: Mikhail Fokine and Jerome Robbins.

Where Morris’ dancers looked cued into life--lacking both soul and independence--the dancers at Robbins’ Chopin gatherings always move from inner need, and even Fokine’s sylphides are propelled by something deeper in the music than its counts.

Impeccably counted, “Sang-Froid” remained emotionally vacant--even when, out of nowhere, Morris conjured up a dance drama for his finale: Julie Worden being surrounded and hurled about before making an escape just before the last cadence.

Very showy--but who was she? Who were her oppressors? And how did their episode relate to all the abstract, business-as-usual choreography earlier in the piece?

No more knowable as characters, the three unhappy couples in Morris’ familiar “The Argument” (1999, to Schumann) at least provided the dancers with sustained opportunities to showcase their individual artistry. The intensity of Charlton Boyd again dominated the performance, but Marjorie Folkman held her own against him in the volatile opening duet. Shawn Gannon and Ruth Davidson brought warmth to the less distinctive third section and, dancing opposite Michelle Yard, Morris himself deftly wielded his Falstaffian heft in the central segment.

“Silhouettes” (1999) offered a different kind of showpiece: a fleet, jazzy playoff-- complete with a kind of cakewalk-finale--that gained interest from seeing the same (or mirrored) movements performed by tall Julie Worden and tiny Lauren Grant. Costumes emphasized Grant’s upper torso and Worden’s legs, further enhancing the contrasts. Richard Cumming composed the music.

Pianist Ethan Iverson accompanied everything on the program tirelessly and artfully, aided in “The Argument” by cellist Wolfram Koessel and in “Dancing Honeymoon” by percussionist Stefan Schatz and violinist Sarah Roth.

Besides the dancers previously mentioned, the company included John Heginbotham, June Omura, David Leventhal, Seth Davis, Kim Reis, Bradon McDonald, Mireille Radwan-Dana and Matthew Rose.