Dance

Mark Morris' marvelously spirited and musically attuned dances have redefined our ideas of the body in motion. Mark Morris Dance Group returns to BAM this year with the reprise of the opera Four Saints in Three Acts. With orchestral and choral music by Virgil Thomson (performed live by the MMDG Music Ensemble), libretto by Gertrude Stein, and illustrator and author Maira Kalman's luminous sets, Morris' Four Saints is grand, ebullient, and spiritually resonant. By way of delightful processions, sevillanas, and redolent folk dancing, the deliverance to heaven of the Spanish saints Teresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola comes to life.

The evening begins with the world premiere of Morris' newest work A Choral Fantasy, set to Beethoven's "Fantasia in C minor for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80," with costumes by Isaac Mizrahi and lighting design by Michael Chybowski.