Celebrated choreographer Mark Morris has written a spiky memoir.
(He can still feel like a charlatan.)
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You cant write a big article about my office, says Mark Morris, arching an eyebrow.
Thats crazy, he says of the naughty novelty.
I dont know why it would be both of those things.
There are at least 15, the kind schoolkids earn for track-and-field events.
I didnt win any of them, he says.
I found them in the disposal room of my apartment building and figured someones teenage son died.
His eyes sparkle with mirth.
Or he went to college, he says.
Then, because he cant help it: College or heaven.
Morris truly believes dance is for everyone, and he built the building with that idea in mind.
Morris has now written a memoir,Out Loud,which is fragrant with his spiky humor.
(Vernacular dance styles continue to animate his work.)
This was his fix.
Theres lots of gossip and score-settling inOut Loudand a good deal of his friend Mikhail Baryshnikov.
And dont expect him to explain himself.
When interviewers ask, What do you want the audience to get?
he responds, Home safely.
(This kind of tart response went down less well with the Belgians than it did back home.)
It was the heckle heard round the (dance) world.
I still feel that way about the piece, Morris says.
I just found it gratuitous and awful.
For a while, Morris stopped getting invited to the American Dance Festival.
Hes more diplomatic these days, but perhaps only a little.
I saw a piece by Paul Taylor a couple seasons before he died, he recalls.
It was, like, five men and a woman forcibly have sex with a young woman.
He winces in distaste and mimes an audience applauding.
Morris thinks contemporary ballet is sliding backward.
He didnt expect to live, because which gay man did in 1984?
And yet here he is.
Thereafter, he is defiantly single.
(I guess when youre horny, nothing stops you, Mizrahi says.)
The two had met when Anna Wintour tried to set them up.
I have sex very, very infrequently, partly because Im not very interested, Morris says.
Besides, he is a good boyfriend to himself.
I dont eat out of the refrigerator, he says.
I set the table and have a candle and a linen napkin and a fork.
His idea of a good night in is whipping up some Indian food and watchingJeopardy!
But having to monitor everything one says and does is a little eggshell-y for me.
He also knows his perfectionism can veer into bullying.
It was distressing, he admits.
Ill say, You do that, you do this.
Go the other direction.
Lie on your face and do it.
Now with a partner.
Even today, he confesses, I feel like a fake a little bit, an unprepared charlatan.
Going through Customs, I assume Im smuggling heroin.
But whether despite or because of this, work keeps tumbling out.
Recently, he was in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, where he directed three short works by Samuel Beckett.
Ive been essentializing, as I would put it, he says.
Everything is overstuffed and hard to read.
Hes never long-winded, Mizrahi says.
Hes not a fancy guy.
Mark loves to do laundry.
Im leaving dances to my company, to the dancers of the future, he says.
Its like Im emptying my pockets before I put my clothes in the washer.
He pauses on the thought, as if turning it over in his mind.
He says, Throwing your clothes in the wash thats a beautiful analogy about dying.
Out Loudwill be published on October 22.
