Socrates Mark Morris on Death and Dying Alice Miller Cotter

RESUMEN: Mark Morris's choreographic depiction of absence in Socrates (2010), set to Erik Satie's austere musical response to Plato's retelling of Socrates's death, poses important question about the nature of Morris's expressive gesture-its origins, proceedings, and implications. In this essay, I examine the technical inner working of the text, music, and dance and argue that Morris provides a frame for depicting loss that can help articulate something fundamental about Plato's text and Satie's score. If the notion of dance invites us to listen to the text and music in a different way, it also encourages us to reconsider not only the interrelations between text, music, and dance but also how expressions of death and dying play out in contemporary culture through Morris's nearly thirty-year study of Plato's text and Satie's score. Those who truly grasp philosophy pursue the study of nothing else but dying and being dead. - Socrates The thing about mortality in my work is it's always been about that. I mean, a dance is over as soon as the music is done. - Mark Morris