Also on the bill for this free outdoor program is the choreographer\u2019s U.S. premiere of \u201cQuad,\u201d a wordless television play by Samuel Beckett.<\/b>
\nTo make a dance to some of Handel\u2019s \u201cWater Music\u201d and title it simply \u201cWater\u201d is just the kind of joke you would expect from Mark Morris. So is staging that work in Brooklyn Bridge Park with New York Harbor as the backdrop, putting \u201cWater\u201d right up against the water. The title helps set the tone: a little impudent in its unfussy plain-spokenness. And despite the downsides of the location \u2014 a concrete promenade for a stage, which forced the dancers to protect their usually bare feet with sneakers, and recorded music (a rare concession for this troupe) \u2014 that tone is part of what made the work particularly suited for a free, outdoor show. For 45 minutes on Saturday, the neighborly Mark Morris Dance Group presented high-class choreography on a lovely day to people who sat on the sloping grass, passed by with strollers and pets or simply soaked up the sun, like the man wearing nothing but what could be described as a codpiece. \u201cWater,\u201d which closed the program, is short, about 10 minutes long. Tape outlines a quadrangle on the floor and the full company walks that perimeter, framing couples who take turns in lyric flights through the center, one dancer often carrying another who is upside down. As different groupings of dancers come and go, marking the hornpipe music with some maritime motions, rumpling Baroque grace with hip bumps and air kisses, other dancers pass in front or behind. It\u2019s a delightful, teeming world that leaves you wanting more. This was preceded by a Samuel Beckett play. In 2019, Morris was invited to stage three Beckett works for Happy Days: Enniskillen International Beckett Festival in Northern Ireland. On Saturday, Morris\u2019s company offered the United States premiere of his staging of \u201cQuad,\u201d a wordless television play that Beckett wrote in 1981. As its one-word title indicates, \u201cQuad\u201d is also organized by quadrangle. A figure in a hooded robe stalks the perimeter and cuts across the diagonal. When another hooded figure joins in \u2014 and a third and a fourth \u2014 they have to dodge one another in the center. That swerve is a twist as typical of Beckett as it is of Morris. The addition and later subtraction of performers is a playing out of permutations; as soon as you figure out the pattern, you start wondering when it\u2019s going to end. But in Beckett\u2019s instructions, as in the original German production, the crossing performers avoid a small square area in the middle, an absurdist hole. In Morris\u2019s version, the dancers don\u2019t avoid a charged space; they sidestep a collision. It\u2019s a social act, civil choreography. And where in the original production the cowled figures scuttled through their ritual quickly, like rats in a maze, Morris\u2019s performers walk on a beat provided by other members of the group, who bang drums, pans and a propane tank. Without diverging from the metronomic pacing, the swerve puts a little skip in between steps, a lift that\u2019s like a higher note. Morris turns Beckett\u2019s dark slapstick into a kind of folk dance. There\u2019s an aspect of folk dance in most of what this company does. That includes the opener of this program, which is set to some of Mendelssohn\u2019s \u201cSongs Without Words\u201d and is titled, of course, just \u201cWords.\u201d For \u201cWords,\u201d the music was live, played on keyboard by the ever-excellent Colin Fowler. Its use of space \u2014 dancers appearing for just a moment on the edge of the dancing area \u2014 marks the 2014 work as clearly one conceived for the proscenium stage. Here, the only wings were those of gulls. A stage is where these dancers belong, and here\u2019s hoping they can return inside soon. But at Brooklyn Bridge Park, where some of their high-armed gestures inadvertently mirrored Lady Liberty\u2019s pose behind them, they weren\u2019t at all out of place. The program will be repeated at Queens Botanical Garden on Oct.3.<\/p>\n