Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble will appear at the Rialto

Pre-show talk at 7 p.m.

There is a simplicity in Mark Morris’ speaking, and in his choreography, that belies the deep knowledge of music, mastery of form, and breadth of human expression that have earned him recognition as one of today’s pre-eminent living choreographers. This Saturday, his New York-based Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble will make its first Atlanta appearance in nearly 15 years at the Rialto Center for the Arts.

The concert will feature “Pacific” and “Festival Dance” to live piano trios by Lou Harrison and Johann Nepomuk Hummel respectively, and “A Wooden Tree” to songs by Ivor Cutler. As Morris spoke recently with the AJC, there was joy in the timbre of his voice — and laughter, just beneath the surface of his sentences, rose freely and frequently.

Q: Why is live music of primary importance to you?

A: A better question is, why does everybody else think it's not of primary importance? Like, why do you get away with living dancers and dead music? Of course, if (it's) musique concrete, or something that only exists because of the technology of the recording, that's perfectly fine. But to use recorded piano music—it's not that much more difficult to get a pianist. I'm sorry.

Or else if you’re a choreographer and you can only afford – maybe, save up for a violin partita, or something, then do that. Don’t use giant orchestra music unless music isn’t that important to you.

It also has to be good. So, no one’s required to work with music the way I do. It’s just that I think that’s what makes sense. I want everybody to be alive in the theater—the viewer, the audience and all of the people performing.

Q: What was it about Ivor Cutler’s music that inspired you?

A: He's a genius; the work is very poignant and sort of dark and surprising. There are laughs in it, but audiences very often — because there's so much television, and people spend so much time alone — when something's funny, people often laugh at it out loud. Which I'm all for, but then you miss the next line, which is probably the actually funnier one. And so the work, on first hearing, seems sort of light and wacky; but it's also very profound and very humane and very strange. That's why, since he's been dead a long time, I wouldn't want anybody to impersonate him.

Most of his work is what people nowadays call “spoken word.” He was a great raconteur and had a fabulous imagination that makes children go wild with possibilities.

Q: Mikhail Baryshnikov has performed in about a dozen of your works, including the first production of “A Wooden Tree.” How have the two of you, as artists, influenced one another?

A: Everyone who works with anyone influences the other person. He holds me responsible for lengthening his dance career, which I accept as … wonderful.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like for people to know before the performance?

A: Just come and listen and watch. That's plenty to ask. I'm not in the business of trying to teach anybody a lesson or anything. It's just a dance, everybody. It'll be over, eventually (He laughs). But it'll never happen that same way again. So, come once, and come often.