"V is a life-affirming new dance by Mark Morris, not only one of his best pieces in many years but also one of the few great works that modern dance has produced in a decade.

Earth and sky are married in its images of pure dancing. A dirgelike parade of dancers on all fours is poetic in its strangeness. By contrast, the stage opens heavenward with the V formations of exuberant dancers soaring up like birds amid a dazzling succession of exits and entrances."
The New York Times

"The joy was infectious. The feeling of community in the last two movements was as unmistakable as it was beautiful.  As the company walked downstage and seemed on the verge of embracing everyone in the theater, the dance seemed drenched in optimism, and the optimism was triumphant."
The San Francisco Chronicle

"Overwhelming; V is the most organic of masterpieces."
Voice of Dance

Mark Morris was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson.  In the early years of his career, he performed with the dance companies of Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, Eliot Feld, and the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble.  He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, and has since created more than 120 works for the company. 


In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris is also much in demand as a ballet choreographer and has created seven works for the San Francisco Ballet since 1994 and received commissions from many others.  His work is also in the repertory of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, Houston Ballet, English National Ballet, and The Royal Ballet.  Morris is noted for his musicality and has been described as “undeviating in his devotion to music.”  He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, English National Opera, and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. 

In 2010, he received the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society.

The MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP was formed in 1980 and gave its first concert that year in New York City. The company’s touring schedule steadily expanded to include cities both in the U.S. and in Europe, and in 1986 it made its first national television program for the PBS series Dance in America. In 1988, MMDG was invited to become the national dance company of Belgium, and spent three years in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The company returned to the United States in 1991 as one of the world’s leading dance companies, performing across the U.S. and at major international festivals.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, the company has maintained and strengthened its ties to several cities around the world, most notably its West Coast home, Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA, and its Midwest home, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, IL.

In the fall of 2001, MMDG opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY, housing rehearsal space for the dance community, outreach programs for local children, as well as a school offering dance classes to students of all ages.