Mark Morris Dance Group offers 90 minutes of Mozartian classical heaven.

His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
February 15, 2015

Mark Morris is the larger than life and just as outspoken doyen of American choreographers and his 2006 hit, Mozart Dances, is appropriately a great big peacock of a show. A Perth Festival headliner, it demands a symphony orchestra (in this instance the excellent WASO) plus two solo pianists. And it offers 16 dancers in 90 minutes of unalloyed upbeat dance that dazzlingly reflects the Enlightenment ideals of the age it celebrates – that of its musical inspiration, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

A tripartite event, the first third features Morris’s women dancing to Mozart’s seldom-heard Eleventh Piano Concerto in the sunny key of F Major. The mens’ turn comes next in Double, danced to the equally jaunty Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos. Finally, after an interval, all come together for a romp through the famous B Flat Major Piano Concerto No 27. If that sounds like a smorgasbord of jollity, it is, and if I had one criticism it would be a yearning for something minor key, preferably somewhere in the middle. However, curmudgeonly whims aside, what Morris has to offer...