TITAS presents Mark Morris’ The Look of Love, with costume design by Isaac Mizrahi,
Nov. 23 at The Winspear. (Photos by David Bazemore)
Choreographer Mark Morris and designer Isaac Mizrahi are a match made in gay heaven
RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
The Look of Love, choreographer Mark Morris set his sights on the music of Burt Bacharach for his latest work, which premiered in 2022. TITAS will present the piece by Mark Morris Dance Group on Saturday, Nov. 23, at the Winspear Opera House.
But beyond just an exploration of dance and movement, this piece is a collaboration of two gay titans.
Morris suffers no fools and questions every question thrown at him. He was once the bad boy of dance, a sort of iconoclast in that realm. But today, he’s grown into a revered and respected choreographer who challenges audiences while also expressing his love of music through movement.
“Why Burt Bacharach? Why not? The answer is because I love the music,” Morris said. “I think if you’re of a certain age, you’ll know it better than others. But he was brilliant.”
While he may be classified most immediately as a choreographer, Morris says he’s a musician first, because his love of music is where his choreography comes from. Or maybe better to say they are the same for him.
“The music exists first, always the music. But dance and music are related,” he said. “It’s just that the music in general is far more sophisticated.
“The world of music is gigantic, and dance, comparatively, is extremely small. I prefer to be on that big side of music.”
Morris prefers to present his company’s performances with live music. As he said, music and dance are the same thing and, thus, should be experienced in the same ways. So Saturday’s performance will feature an ensemble of piano, trumpet, bass and drums, with singer/actress/Broadway star Marcy Harriell delivering vocals to Bacharach’s classic tunes.
Element of design
When Morris was figuring out the show’s visual aesthetic, he turned to his longtime friend and designer, Isaac Mizrahi.
The famous designer has collaborated with Morris before, the last time being for the opera Orfeo ed Euridice at The Metropolitan Opera. While most are familiar with Mizrahi as a fashion designer and TV personality, the designer himself stated the parallels between fashion and performance are varied.
“The through process is the same, but designing for anything besides fashion is different,” he said. “All design comes from solving a problem. That’s all we’re doing, so you take the situation and move toward solving that.”
But Mizrahi asserts everything that’s seen onstage in The Look of Love is Morris’ idea.
“He tells me what he thinks. He is the auteur,” Mizrahi said. “I’ll do a few sketches to present, but he makes the show entirely.
“I have a very big responsibility to him, but he likes working with me,” the designer continued. “I take it all very seriously, and I listen to the music and let the colors channel through that so I can see it in my mind’s eye.”
For this show, Mizrahi initially presented a black-and-white palette. But Morris “told me to think about color and listen to the music and its sophisticated sound. The palate suggested itself, and I came back with this vibrant and colorful palette that was also warm and had a few surprises,” he said.
The result was an array of colors that look like genderless clouds of movement. The fabric is soft and flowy while also eye-catching.
Mizrahi said he gets Morris’ vision because of their longtime friendship and previous collabs.
“We’re very old. We’ve had millions of meetings and dinners over 30-something years,” Mizrahi said. “In this particular case, I saw an amorphous version of the clothes that refer to the period of the music. I wasn’t being genderblind so much as it was who I thought would look good in what.”
As Mizrahi tells it, he and Morris met in the late 1980s at Brooklyn Academy of Music when he saw Morris in a performance. Later, famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour set the two of them up on a date.
“That didn’t work,” Mizrahi said. “It was immediately obvious. But I’m mad about his work, and we became good friends. He then called me to make a costume for [Mikhail] Baryshnikov. It was such a thrill to meet Misha and do it for Mark.”
Homage to Bacharach
In some ways, The Look of Love is a full-circle moment for Mizrahi by way of Morris, since the designer interviewed the songwriter and composer for Interview magazine.
“I’m so glad you mentioned this. I got to meet [Bacharach] for that interview, and we spent some time together but then kept in touch over the years. He was a darling and one of the last things he attended was a rehearsal for this show. It was all very dramatic but sweet. I was very lucky to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye,’” Mizrahi said.
The reverence for Bacharach is all around. Morris described his music as timeless, “but it’s not nostalgic. It’s just great music that’s proven itself.”
For tickets, visit TITAS.org.