The New Yorker, July 7 & 14, 2008
from Joan Acocella's article "Romeo, Romeo" on Mark Morris's "Romeo and Juliet" based on a lost Prokofiev score: Morris's habit of standing inside a dance as he creates it is different from what many other choreographers do. . . . Morris is famous for the viscera quality of his dances--the fact that they are fleshy, muscular, that you can feel them on your body--and this is surely due in part to his habit of choreographing from inside, or starting there. * His most frequent correction was that he wanted the company to dance harder, with more attack. His other, constant complaint was about entropy--the fact that the dancers, two days after he taught them something, would start to slur it. Composers can comfort themselves that, if one performance is not to their liking, the next may be. The score survives. In dance, there is no score. The piece is what is performed. *** from Adam Gopnik's article "The Back of the World" on G. K. Chesterton: ...