Wesley

Wesley — marelibri

OUT LOUD. A Memoir

2019réf. 15351New York: Penguin Press 2019. First edition. Hardcover. A near fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket. This copy is inscribed on the title page by Mark Morris. From the most brilliant and audacious choreographer of our time the exuberant tale of a young dancer’s rise to the pinnacle of the performing arts world and the triumphs and perils of creating work on his own terms—and staying true to himself. Before Mark Morris became “the most successful and influential choreographer alive” The New York Times he was a six year-old in Seattle cramming his feet into Tupperware glasses so that he could practice walking on pointe. Often the only boy in the dance studio he was called a sissy a term he wore like a badge of honor. He was unlike anyone else deeply gifted and spirited. Moving to New York at nineteen he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Audiences in 1976 had the luxury of Merce Cunningham’s finest experiments with time and space of Twyla Tharp’s virtuosity and Lucinda Childs’s genius. Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together travelled together slept together. No one wanted to break the spell or miss a thing because “if you missed anything you missed everything.” This collective led by Morris’s fiercely original vision became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group. Suddenly Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorker’s critic as one of the great young talents an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelo’s David he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov Yo-Yo Ma Lou Harrison and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era the worst of the AIDS epidemic through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body an artist as joyful as he is provocative. This is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit Morris’s memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold a brilliant maverick who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance. Illustrated from photographs. 374 pages with index. Penguin Press hardcover