This blog can take credit for at least two people buying last minute (Tuesday) tickets to the Mark Morris concert and coming to the preconcert discussion last Wednesday. But the folks sitting around me at the 3/31 McCarter concert mourned that they missed the preconcert conversation (Simon Morrison and Mark Morris, sponsored in part by the Lewis Center for the Arts.)

I didn’t intend to post a review of the that wonderful “fed my soul” concert or an account of the discussion (remember, I’m supposed to be on hiatus) but I did do a live Tweet stream, and now that I look at it, it’s pretty informative.

One item of useful information that was NOT mentioned in the preconcert discussion: The last section of “Grand Duo” was ever so familiar. That’s because Princeton University dance students performed it last year.

Even if you are not a Twitter follower, you probably know that each message must be 140 characters. Each of these messages was preceded by a “Mark Morris @Princeton” tag. To get the authentic Twitter experience, read from the bottom up, but it doesn’t really matter.

Morris was his usual obstreperous self, but he revealed some interesting info. As below.

new ‘festival dance’ is hetero normative, I.e. men dance with women and keep same partners

balanchine lacked irony, wit, drama, danger, sex, humor, and oh yes rhythm

I love Balanchine so much that I regret deeply his deification. People accuse us of both being musical and thats true.

Petrichor is ‘ girls girls girls’ using 8 women at a time when all male dancers were new

I don’t rehearse to a recording, an organist accompanies, he can read a quartet score.

(for Petrichor) I couldnt find a (nontraditional) string quartet but found villa lobos 2, lush rainforest, tangle of rhythms 3s, 2s, 4s, 6s

have gone thru all the stages – I was fabulous, then was a charlatan, then t.o.t., then alive again now a great treasure..

castigates mccosh hall for its squeaky floors and exit that is right next to the podium, deflecting attention

with live music I get a music audience, not just the super critical dance audience.

even if a narrative music and/or dance should be untranslatable.

if you try to make nothing happen through art you will fail because you have already added something, even john cage.

when dance critics decide what audiences should see, it’s the end of civilization.

Morris repeated the dance critic line twice.