Critic’s Choice

Tue Feb 21, 2017 at 12:08 pm

The Mark Morris Dance Group in “A Forest.”

For inventiveness of motion married to the gestures of music, few choreographers are as adroit and unpredictable as Mark Morris. For the past decade Mark Morris Dance Group has regularly brought some of its dance programs to the George Mason University Center of the Arts. This year’s visit is slated for this coming weekend, and it will feature some rare musical repertory worth hearing on its own.

Two new dances, both premiered last year, include A Forest, set to Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 44, and Pure Dance Items, set to Terry Riley’s Salome Dances for Peace. The older Serenade, premiered in 2003, goes with Lou Harrison’s Serenade for Guitar and Percussion. A final jazz-inspired work, Dancing Honeymoon, will feature Mark Morris himself singing, on Ethan Iverson’s transcription and arrangement of songs by Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan

Mark Morris Dance Group performs in Fairfax 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. cfa.gmu.edu; 888-945-2468.

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Duo pianists Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa will also perform rarely heard music at the Phillips Collection. Their recital includes Shostakovich’s Concertino for Two Pianos, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (in the composer’s arrangement for piano, four hands), Kurt Schwertsik’s Incidental music to Macbeth, and Philip Glass’s Four Movements for Two Pianos.

This concert will take place 4 p.m. Sunday at the Phillips Collection. phillipscollection.org; 202-387-2151 x277.


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