In a world of dizzying and doubt-inducing complexity, there's something refreshing about the kind of direct and lovely simplicity that marks "Visitation," which the Mark Morris Dance Group performed to open the Cal Performances season at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday night.
Seemingly suspended in a state of expectancy, "Visitation" (set to Beethoven's sonata No. 4 for cello (Wolfram Koessel) and piano (Colin Fowler) is suffused with a kind of intimate anticipation. Groups break into pairs, dancers shift partners, intermingling duets for Joe Bowie, Noah Vinson, Michelle Yard and Rita Donahue pulse between sharp and soft, but throughout there's an ecstatic impulse in repeated arched backs and faces upturned toward the heavens as if hunting for salvation. And at the heart of the piece is a pensive Maile Okamura - a kind of outlier, though not an outsider to the group of nine dancers. Okamura invests the Beethoven score with a delicate yet passionate touch and it's infectiously delightful to watch her take to the air, hair flying across her face.
Read more at the SF Chronicle site.
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