A WORLD RENOWNED DANCE COMPANY CELEBRATES 18 YEARS OF BRINGING MAGIC AND COMMUNITY OUTREACH TO THE BOROUGH

BY ERIK SCHONING

When 19 year old Mark Morris first moved to the metro area, he lived in a loft with other artists trying to make names for themselves. Today a globally famed dancer and choreographer, he has called the city home ever since. But in all the intervening years, from the early success of the Mark Morris Dance Group to work with ballet and opera companies from San Francisco to Paris, collaborations with cellist Yo Yo Ma and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, and the success of his Nutcracker adaptation, The Hard Nut, Morris has never forgotten where it all began.

In the heart of the Brooklyn Cultural District, wedged between Fulton and Flatbush, sits the Mark Morris Dance Center along with neighbors BAM, The Center for Fiction, and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. Opened in 2001, it is the Mark Morris Dance Group’s permanent home, a rare distinction in a city where most companies have to rent and wander.

“What makes us unique is that we’ve got this community based center,” said Sarah Marcus, the Dance Group’s director of education. “Our dancers teach in our programs. [This is not an] organization that’s up on a pedestal, and that’s important to Mark.”

The success of this engagement is self-evident: the Center welcomes thousands of people through its doors every week. On any given day one is likely to see parents with toddlers, school groups, longtime performers and novices in classes that instruct contemporary dance to hip hop, jazz to ballet. Morris’s performances have long been hailed for their musicality, and the Center pays tribute to this with live music accompaniments.

In order to reach as many Brooklynites as possible, the Center offers affordable rates, scholarships, and occasionally free classes featuring top performers of the Dance Group part of what it terms a “covenant” with the community, a relationship the organization takes seriously. Additionally, every class is available to students both with and without disabilities, and the Center partners with the city’s Department of Education and NYCHA to offer free offsite classes in four of the five boroughs.

“We have this famous quote from Mark,” added Marcus. “He once said, ‘Dance is not for everybody. It’s for anybody.’ It’s the essence of his contribution to the dance world from the pieces on stage to the programs in schools.”

One of the Center’s flagship programs, the Dance, Music and Literacy Project, is a telling example: An interdisciplinary in school structure, it deals with the Morris choreographed L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, which was inspired by the poetry of John Milton, the music of Handel, and the paintings of William Blake. Poetry, music, visual art, and dance make up a course that plays out over ten weeks. Blending an appreciation of Morris’s work with a multimedia history of art, it is either deeply discounted or offered at no cost to schools.
The arts scene in New York City is as competitive as it gets. Against such a high stakes backdrop, the Mark Morris Dance Center goes about its work in democratic spirit, de mystifying performance among its students and reducing it to the essential elements of expression, movement, and joy.

“Being a part of [Mark’s] world can seem unattainable,” Marcus said. “Even the beautiful pictures we have in our windows of amazing dancers can be intimidating. But what I want to convey to anyone who has an interest is that anybody’s welcome, and that you belong here.”

Mark Morris Dance Center
3 Lafayette Avenue / 718.624.8400 /
mmdg.org