Mark Morris Dance Group makes light of "L'Allegro"

Dance review |

Mark Morris's "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," created in 1988 under stressful circumstances, is an astoundingly joyful work: rigorous yet buoyant, fine-spun yet downright loosey-goosey in places. You'd never guess it was the first piece mounted by an upstart American choreographer before a new and skeptical European audience (at Brussels' Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie). The thing just brims over with confidence.

That confidence was on full, ebullient display at the Paramount Theatre Friday night.

Inspired by George Frideric Handel's oratorio of the same name and taking most of its text from two poems by John Milton, "L'Allegro" pits Dionysian urges against a more sober, meditative approach to life.

Dionysus, frankly, wins. The final chorus is "Mirth, with thee we mean to live," and many of the highlights of the show are purely comical: a kiss-kiss-and-slap-slap session by a dozen paired male dancers; a hunt in which two nymphs are chased through a limb-and-torso-created forest by some very dawgy (human) dogs; a he-wants-me-he-wants-me-not tease between two lovers (with a but-I-don't-want-him ending).

Yet even the more stately stretches of this evening-length work appear to take their cue from Busby Berkeley as much as philosophical longueur or courtly dance tradition. Their elasticity of shape and movement — point and counterpoint, lilt and counter-lilt, ripple and reflection — approaches the ecstatic.

In Charles Jennens' rejiggering of Handel's score, the "L'Allegro" passages alternate with "il Penseroso," light succeeding shadow succeeding light. Each phase is a swift vignette. The light and dark are made literal by Adrianne Lobel's set and James F. Ingalls' lighting design, as stage-wide scrims and screens rise and fall and a lush palette of ever-changing colors plays over them. Against these, 24 dancers — in bright and airy costumes by Christine Van Loon — weave their patterns and have their day.

This is an ensemble work. As Morris commented in an interview last month, "A solo in my company is really: You're doing something and 20 other people are running around, distracting us from you." Even so, one soloist, David Leventhal, delivered a twittering avian turn that was a stand-out delight. (Note: this is also a birds-and-the-bees work.)

Morris makes a point of presenting his dances with live music, and in Seattle that has mostly meant small ensembles in the pit or on stage. With this renewed alliance with the Seattle Symphony (they collaborated on a Meany Hall production of "L'Allegro" in 1994), Morris is offering something on a grander scale.

Maestro Gerard Schwarz, four fine soloists and the Symphony and Chorale handled the score with elegant verve, boding well for next year's Seattle premiere of Morris' 2006 work, "Mozart Dances."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com