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Remember
the Beatles'
landmark album Sgt
Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band? Pepperland is the tribute prolific American choreographer Mark Morris paid to the Fab Four in 2017, at the Sgt. Pepper at 50 Festival in Birmingham. The same year, Pepperland played at Cal Performances, and the one-hour show got an encore this spring. As I didn't see the first round I got the full surprise of a score that only sparingly quotes the source.
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For Pepperland, Morris collaborated with composer Ethan
Iverson, ex-music director of the Mark Morris Dance Group and
ex-member of an avantgarde jazz trio. They used half a dozen
tracks from the landmark album (plus Penny Lane, which became
a single instead of being on the LP) and Iverson create something
like a deconstruction: the songs appear drowned in modern jazz
disharmonies mixed with an "undercurrent of classical music"
(Iverson) found in the Beatles songs. There are irregular rhythms,
blaring big-band brass and the woo-woo whine of a theremin for
the melodic lines. Certainly an interesting composition, but on a
distant planet from the 1967 Beatles sound. Morris used to warn
audiences that this is "no Beatles singalong." Apparently the
Birmingham audience tried to clap along enthusiastic and quickly
abandoned the idea. Adding to the alienation, a different baritone
(Clinton Curtis) sings a handful of verses. A very pleasant voice
for sure, but I found myself constantly hunting for echoes of the
real thing.
The real thing, the Beatles-spirit, thrived in the irreverent
choreography, the joyous, speedy, jaunty movements of the
fifteen members of the group. The costumes (Elizabeth
Kurtzman) are a feast for the eyes, recalling the pop-psychedelic
original album cover, although in more muted candy shades. They
are 60s mod: yellow slacks with pink socks, mauve dress shirts
and polo necks. Half of the women are also in slacks, the rest in
mini skirts and Mary Quant checkered coats, although some look
less like Twiggy in a babydoll than like wearing mini muu-muus,
ballooning and swallowing the dancers' bodies for no good reason
. Sunglasses add a bit of rockstar glamour or perhaps a nostalgic
note of the iconic "kaleidoscope eyes" (although "Lucy in the Sky"
is not on the album.)
The stage (Johan Henckens) is seeped in changing colors. The
light jumps off the strange piles of Mylar that line the back and
sometimes look like urban trash and then like glittering icebergs,
autumn leaves or distant mountain ranges.
At the start, the baritone singer plays emcee and introduces some
of the celebrities from the album cover -- Shirley Temple, Fred
Astaire, Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich and others – to great
comical effect. The dancers step up without the least resemblance
or attempt at glamour, cracking up the audience, and then take an
ironic Vogue pose. From then on, the fifteen brilliant dancers are
constantly in motion, funny, smart, peppy in typical Mark Morris
mode, with a tender edge of the grotesque. The one-hour show is
a whirlwind of entrances and exits with marvelous counter-moves
that propel one group diagonally to the right while the counter
group moves to the left. The number four dominates the
dynamics with frequent daisy chains crisscrossing the space to
"With a little help from my friends."
Later on, one dancer detaches from the chain, spends a moment
alone and chains up again. Repeatedly over the course of the
show, one dancer twists or shimmies enthusiastically in disco
style only to join four others who are schlepping along flat-footed
like penguins, with hanging heads as if to illustrate Penny Lane's
"I read the news today, oh boy." A moment later, a woman is
carried across at hip-height like a stunned fish. Then they are all
in a Broadway kick lane.
Themes of songs occasionally get brief pantomimed illustrations
for example, when several guys leopard-crawl to "The English
army won the war.". "When I'm sixty-four" has couples dragging
each other until a small-bodied woman throws her male partner
over her shoulder and struts out with him. During a classically
inspired adagio (was there an echo from "I need somebody to
love" in the music?), three couples slowly draw romantic circles
with each other: a gay, a lesbian and a hetero pair.
Indian music themes from "Within You Without You" bring up a
dancer sitting Yogi-like in front, staring through cool shades,
while the others gambol behind him, unaffected by sacred
ambitions.
Perhaps a psychedelic high is alluded to in a recurring theme of
one or two male dancers running across the stage with a woman,
swinging her into the air like a child, drawing beautiful arcs with
her body.
The final track of the LP, "A Day in the Life," provides one of the
rare emotional moments with "I went into a dream" when the
choir is suddenly sung – beautifully sung -- by the entire group of
dancers who then curls into one close-knit group. I felt it as a
welcome relief from the hurly-burly tumult of the seven
musicians (pianist Iverson among them) in the pit.
It struck me that on the whole, Pepperland is devoid of erotic
vibes or passions. The group acts like a gender-neutral, asexual
community of happy campers. And that is perhaps the point.
When you "read the news today oh boy," you want a little help
from your friends, many friends – if possible, a whole community.
Copyright-Frank Wing Photo
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