Here Comes the Sun

Talk about a Terpsichorean/Euterpean acid-like trip! Brooklyn-based Mark Morris Dance Group, currently celebrating its 45^th anniversary, burst onto the stage of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts last Friday in their Carnaby Street-type costumes that popped with color and pizazz, all the while brilliantly bouncing, wildly whirling, and lusciously leaping to live music.

Performance

Mark Morris Dance Group: “Pepperland” by Mark Morris

Place

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, California, May 16-18, 2025

Words

Victoria Looseleaf

Noah Vinson, Laurel Lynch, Brandon Randolph, Billy Smith in “Pepperland” by Mark Morris. Photograph by Robert Torres

The occasion was Morris’ acclaimed, “Pepperland,” a work originally commissioned by the city of Liverpool that premiered in 2017 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the game-changing Beatles’ album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

And even though L.A. was a little late to the Pepper party, we’ll gladly take it!

From its fabled album cover—a collage that, in addition to the Fab Four, featured such boldfaced names as Albert Einstein, Fred Astaire and Marilyn Monroe, all of whom trotted out when introduced by vocalist/guru/guide Clinton Curtis at the dance’s opening—to the recording’s tunes, which were mind-blowing when they were released, and continue to be hummable, relevant and instantly recognizable (to at least, well, one generation), Morris’ movement vocabulary proved a perfect fit for this Beatles’ bonanza.

As well it should, as Morris, who is supremely musical and has choreographed works to composers ranging from Mozart, Handel and Schubert, to Burt Bacharach, Benjamin Britten and Terry Riley, the 60-plus intermissionless minutes could be deemed what Wagner called, Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art.

In the case of “Pepperland,” the MMDG Music Ensemble—seven pit musicians, including jazz pianist and longtime Morris collaborator Ethan Iverson, who arranged the seven Beatles’ songs and added five of his own compositions that served as the sonic connective tissue and ultimately offered new ways into the Beatles’ landmark pieces—all systems were go.

In other words: Adding to dope choreography and dancing, the septet gloriously wailed, swung and bopped!

Brandon Cournay (yellow), Minga Prather (pink), Dallas McMurray (blue/purple), and Domingo Estrada, Jr. (purple) and dancers of Mark Morris Dance Group in “Pepperland” by Mark Morris. Photograph by Robert Torres

Although not all of the album’s music was performed, the dance was bookended by the title track, with the troupe making more entrances and exits than at Grand Central Station, if, that is, Big Apple travelers could march, vault and execute pelvic bumps in a lockstep Can-Can. Spooling into, “With A Little Help from My Friends,” the movers certainly received aid and support—from each other, and also from the well-oiled music machine, including crack trombonist Jacob Garchik, as the performers became a swaggering, hip-swiveling entity.

And who knew that the jaunty—yet still emotional—“When I’m Sixty-Four,” could also be a look back at the past, when Beatlemaniacs were trying to imagine that dreaded bugaboo—aging. The tune, also a nod to lovers, family and friends, with same sex partnering abounding (hello, Lesley Garrison and Nicole Sabella!), supplied the impetus for the madcap choreography that also featured bits of the Charleston and Irish step dancing: pranksters all.

Of course, adding to the whirlpool of nostalgia were Elizabeth Kurtzman’s divine costumes, the 16-member cast of Mods and Rockers awash in screaming neons: Orange, purple, turquoise, yellow and the like—the palette from the album—and whether in tight-fitting pants, tops or jackets that were mixed and matched with patterned coats and vests, the stage, at times, was so bright (Nick Kolin’s lighting design, which ranged from rainbow-like to muted blues), that the dancers, including Noah Vinson, Laurel Lynch, Brandon Randolph and Billy Smith, occasionally sported aviator shades.

Vinson was also seen as the lotus-sitting yogini at the center of “Within You Without You,” the George Harrison number that had been informed by classical Indian ragas, as Morris, himself, had been a devotee of Indian dance. Also suffused with a bit of Lou Harrison, the late composer with whom the choreographer had often worked, the arrangement featured the enticing rhythms of percussionist Vinnie Sperrazza, while company members, adorned in headwraps, turned meditative, at least when not deploying an arabesque here, a one-legged balancing pose there.

From left: Sarah Haarmann, Brian Lawson, Nicole Sabella, Dallas McMurray, Mica Bernas, Durell Comed in “Pepperland” by Mark Morris. Photograph by Mat Hayward

Make no mistake: While each individual dancer shone—and generally smiled throughout, something a Beatles’ tune can do to a listener—as a unit, they soared. Call it the Cult of Morris, who’s had his finger on the pulse of more than just music—no pun intended—but also has a way of making us see the world in a different way through his gestural choreography and its relation to a lived life.

As for the set, Johan Henckens created a rear bank of small, crushed aluminum-like mountains (an homage, perhaps, to Warhol’s famed silver pillows?), their reflections changing colors with the lighting, which also served as wonderful transitions into songs, the upbeat nature of “Penny Lane,” for example, which seemed to call out for the audience to hum along.

Indeed, Chris McCarthy’s arpeggiated harpsichord runs had shades of Bach, and co-mingled with the jazzy sounds of trumpeter Garchik, which were then reflected by—what this reviewer likes to call—the body scatting of the dancers. Seeming to personify the spirit of a jivey New Orleans, the movers deployed split jumps and barrel turns, while a backwards shoulder-to-shoulder gambit featuring Sarah Haarmann, Brian Lawson, Nicole Sabella, Dallas McMurray, Mica Bernas and Durell Comed, gave new meaning to the words “human archway.”

With the penultimate number, the haunting, “A Day in the Life,” Rob Schwimmer made the most of the theremin (an ingenious touch), as Iverson offered a kind of cocktail lounge accompaniment segueing into Curtis accentuating the words, “I heard the news today.”

Next level, the music, replete with tinges of melancholy, was a reminder that the ’60s, rife with political killings, rioting, and Vietnam, was also the era of Free Love, flower power and those four Liverpudlians crooning, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the reprise bringing the concert to an epic close.

Sure, the world is not exactly a repository of nirvana today, but we can always turn to the Beatles—and the wondrous grooviness of dance, especially when performed by the Mark Morris Dance Group—for a bit of solace.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

comments

Featured

REVIEWS | Steven Sucato

Ultimate Release

Perhaps not since Mikhail Fokine’s 1905 iconic “The Dying Swan” has there been as haunting a solo dance depiction of avian death as Aakash Odedra Company’s “Songs of the Bulbul” (2024).

REVIEWS | Sophie Bress

Weighty Issues

Dance, at its best, captures nuance particularly well, allowing us to feel deeply and purely. In its wordlessness, it places a primal reliance on movement and embodied knowledge as communication all its own. It can speak directly from the body to the heart, bypassing the brain’s drive to “make sense of.”

REVIEWS | Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Modern Figures

“Racines”—meaning roots—stands as the counterbalance to “Giselle,” the two ballets opening the Paris Opera Ballet’s season this year.

REVIEWS | Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Giselle Status

“Giselle” is a ballet cut in two: day and night, the earth of peasants and vine workers set against the pale netherworld of the Wilis, spirits of young women betrayed in love. Between these two realms opens a tragic dramatic fracture—the spectacular and disheartening death of Giselle.