Dancing for Mark - Mark Morris Dance Group

Dance Magazine, June, 1998 by Nanette Maxim

Despite their very individual approaches to work and to life, Fehlandt and Davidson share an aesthetic with Morris that stresses the group dynamic over personal fame, the dance at hand over the dancers. "Individuality begins with a group consciousness," says Fehlandt, who happily traded in her dream of becoming a big ballet star for the "natural, logical flow of Morris's work." Adds Davidson, "It's the community that's important, the dance that's the overriding thing. You have to humble yourself to Mark, to the work. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, but I have to get beyond myself, especially in rehearsal. I've learned the secret of blending in."

The well-documented period in Brussels, when Morris's company expanded from ten to twenty-four dancers, was a great test of their desire to blend. Says Davidson, "I had so much faith in Mark's integrity and I knew then that this could be the next big step for the company. But when he made L'Allegro, a section called `The Hunt' had dancers as trees and bushes. I was playing a shrub, and in another scene I was a sheep. And I thought, `I've danced for twenty years and I move to Brussels to be a shrub, Well, I danced the best shrub I could. Then he created this really difficult solo for me in the opening of Act II, and I realized that being that shrub allowed me to pace myself for the solo." (Morris also created the ominous Wonderland for Davidson and Mikhail Baryshnikov, set to Schoenberg, during this fertile period.)

"It hasn't always been a garden party," says Fehlandt. "In the first year in Brussels it was culture shock, it was group shock, and it was lonely. I wasn't dancing a lot. But I stuck it out, and the second and third years Mark made Love Song Waltzes, one of my favorite dances, and The Hard Nut. I started teaching company class sometimes, and I ran rehearsals. The people who made it through that time have become a really tight group. And the years since we've returned from Brussels have been the best ones for me."

Despite Morris's love for casting against type, he made good use of Fehlandt's grace in Mosaic and United, choreographed to Henry Cowell as a joint effort for Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, and cast her as the mischievous, overcharged Louise in The Hard Nut. ("Who else could do Louise?" asks Morris. "It's so much fun, almost autobiographical.") He gave Davidson the opportunity to turn on the charm with Guillermo Resto in the love duet A Spell. "I'm happy with it," she says, "because it's not all about virtuosity; it requires more drama." Davidson continues to dazzle in Gloria and L'Allegro and, refining her dancing as she goes, brings great comic timing to Platee.

The fact that Davidson is forty-one and Fehlandt forty is another bond with the forty-one-year-old Morris, a choreographer who relies heavily on nonverbal cues to dancers. "There's no way I can have the same type of relationship that I have with these women with someone who's twenty years younger than I am," he says. "It just can't be done. They're intuitive about the way to work, from doing it for years. It's the tone of things and various silent references that are a part of their repertoire because they're a part of mine." Fehlandt adds, "We've watched the same TV shows, read the same books ... we have the same point of view."