city life.: 10/01/2007

An Analysis of Mark Morris’s Reinterpretation of Dido's Lament through Dance

Mark Morris’s take on Dido’s Lament is a superb reinterpretation of Purcell's original musical intentions. As both the choreographer and the star of the performance, he presents a work that is at once impeccable and artistically tasteful. Morris’s choreography adds a layer of complexity over Purcell's interpretation of this classic episode from the Aeneid. It is almost as though he has introduced another "voice" into the music, albeit one that is visual rather than spoken. Like a pair of audiophile-grade headphones, this visual guide helps us realize things in the music we could not hear before, much less understand from the written score. At the same time, because certain parts of his choreography model an audience’s response to Purcell’s music, any revelations we come to from viewing his performance actually makes us more aware of our reaction to the music itself.

Morris achieves this counterpoint between his dance choreography and Purcell’s music through a variety of methods. His choreography maps body movements almost faithfully to the melody, yet moves outside the meter on occasion to demonstrate a point. His wide, expansive gestures go beyond the musical form to take a life of their own, sometimes commenting on or moving against the music, but never over-powering it. One observes that the omnipresent support dancers in Morris’s choreography play the same role as a classic Greek chorus. Besides facilitating transitions between scenes, they support and emphasize key aspects of the operatic themes. Later on, they act as a captive surrogate audience for Dido as she beseeches a missing Aeneas to remember her. Through watching their response, we are forced to experience her emotions vicariously.

Dido's lament actually begins when she collapses to the floor from Belinda's tender grip after declaring “death” to be a “welcome guest.” To mark this transition, the camera pans outward to focus on the Greek chorus dancers as they begin echoing the litany of the chromatically descending ground bass in their footsteps. The dancers exit the stage to an iambic pentameter that is reflected in the passacaglia's bass line; moving on the short note, pausing and swaying on the long note, as if they were taking a deep breath before every step. This measured motion emphasizes the gravity of the situation, holding us in rapt attention. As the Greek chorus exits, the camera pans in on Dido and Belinda, setting up the stage for their performance.

An inconsolable Dido rises from her handmaiden Belinda’s caresses to pour her sorrows into song. As Dido, Morris’s first steps around the dancer portraying Belinda seated on the bench are tentative, but steadily speed up. Dido’s steps initially coincide with the long part of the bass iambic rhythm, then on the short, and finally in between – creating a seamless movement that compliments the stop-and-start rhythm of the ground bass. Morris’s choice of this movement pattern is a sly comment on Purcell’s brilliance in using the regular iambic ground bass to conceal the imbalance of the libretto structure.

Not content with merely reflecting Purcell’s musical form in his choreography, Morris feels the need to tell the story, or rather, melody, his own way. To this end, he creates a set of “movement motifs” – unique body gestures for each theme or idea – which he uses when the occasion calls for it (as noted by Joan Acocella in her article “Mozart Moves” in The New Yorker dated Aug 20, 2007). In the first movement motif, we see Dido stretching her arm up to the heavens while singing of herself being “laid in earth.” The irony of this contrast is unfortunately lost on the ever-faithful Belinda who grasps her mistress’s arm even more tightly, seemingly trying to anchor her on to life.

After this teaser, Morris continues the charade that is the interplay between melody and bass line. He continues Dido’s movements around Belinda, his slow steps echoing the solemnity of the repetitive ground bass, but switches in an instant to echo the melismatic emphasis on the sung word “earth” with a quick, lithe patter of his feet. With expansive and tragically exaggerated gestures, Morris stresses the word “no” with an emphatic twirl of his body. He symbolizes “trouble” by waving his arms by Belinda’s left and right side, as if to ward off any troubles that might be plaguing Belinda. As Dido sings “thy breast,” Morris lays his hands on Belinda’s bosom, as if as to emphasize her point. Belinda’s legs part submissively in response.

These actions are far from being mysterious. Dido, in her distraught frame of mind, thinks that Belinda is actually Aeneas. Being conveniently present, Belinda can act as a surrogate for Dido to express her emotions to Aeneas in absentia. Morris has also imagined Belinda to be an extension of Dido when he makes her part her legs in a stylized sexual response. But the infinitely malleable Belinda regains her identity again when the lament moves on to its second part.

At this point, Morris invokes the ever-present but patiently waiting Greek chorus to be another surrogate audience for him. This time, however, he involves the actual audience in his performance, beseeching us to “remember” Dido. He uses quite a few more movement motifs as well: arms pulled backward in a vertical “v” shape represent an anguished “remember me,” outstretched arms correspond to “ah,” and palms raised to one’s temples means “forget.” “Fate” is intriguingly represented by the raising and crossing of the two arms in an inward-to-outward movement. But this is an apt choice because the cross symbolizes something that is wrong and should be deleted – which is exactly what Dido intends Aeneas to do with the memory of her death.

Morris continues the thoughtful interplay between the melody and the bass line by alternately emphasizing them. As Dido sings “remember me,” he strides across the stage to each side, reeling in the Greek chorus dancers with the invisible lines connected to his hands. Each time, he raises his leg up after the Greek chorus responds, ostensibly to balance himself, but actually to coincide with the subdued roar from the ground bass. Although he does not explicitly acknowledge or direct any attention toward the audience during this period, we can’t help but be irresistibly drawn into his performance. One literally feels like a voyeur when watching Morris’s choreography.

Now the camera pans in to focus on Belinda and Dido, reinforcing the climax of the whole lament. The Greek chorus is forgotten once more after they are exhorted to “remember” Dido – a subtle irony that Morris manages to squeeze in. Belinda believes that her mistress is almost dead, as evidenced by her sorrowful bent-down head, while Morris “pulls” her memory toward himself to coincide with the climatic “remember me.” But she raises and turns her head in hopeful anticipation toward Dido as Morris goes once more to the sides of the stage and repeats the “remember me” motif with the Greek chorus. He even directs his attention to the back of the stage, calling upon the heavens to “remember” Dido. With his hyper-extended torso, Morris displays a virtuosic athleticism that is truly memorable. No one will forget Dido, even after she is “laid in earth.”

Morris ends Dido’s lament with great finesse, of course. Instead of using a curtain drop or the help of stage hands, he directs the dancer playing Belinda to lift the bench used in the scene and carry it toward the back of the stage. They do so haltingly though, constrained by the iambic pentameter of the bass line that has come back to haunt them. The whole Greek chorus follows suit, moving on the short note, stopping and swaying on the long note, much like a heart beat gradually slowing down. We are able to appreciate this poignant image in its entirety as the camera slowly pans out to encompass the whole scene. One by one, the support dancers drop to their knees in a fitting tribute to Dido as she dies.

This dance choreography is breathtaking in its simplicity and deep textures of meaning. With just two people in most of Dido’s lament, Morris has managed to create a story-line which compliments and comments on Purcell’s interpretation. With Purcell, we learn about Dido’s sorrows. But with Morris, we actually feel Dido’s acute suffering. With his choreography, Dido becomes an actual living and breathing person demanding the audience’s attention. Hence, Morris’s performance allows us to transcend the experience of listening to Purcell’s music to become an actual part of it. That is why this dance reinterpretation is so amazing to watch.