On November 28, 1980, Morris got together a group of his friends and put on a performance of his own choreography and called them the Mark Morris Dance Group. For the first several years, the company gave just two annual performances—at
On the Boards in Seattle, Washington, ''For this work, Morris drew inspiration from a piece of text by
Mark Twain in which Twain expresses his thoughts on the
U.S. invasion of the Philippines in 1899, 65 years before the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution heralded the United States' deepening involvement in
Vietnam. The work is set to
Lou Harrison's
gamelan, trumpet and chorus work
In Honor of Mr. Handel and
In Honor of Mark Twain. In "Homage to the Pacifica", Harrison included the following passage by Twain: We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them, destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots: subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God—and the phrase is the government's, not mine—we are a World Power. In addition to using traditional Indonesian gamelan music, Morris studied Indonesian dance, Indonesian puppet theater (
wayang kulit) and traditional Javanese court dances, such as the
bedhaya and
serimpi, extensively borrowing movements, formation patterns and hand gestures from the dances for this work. The music is largely Asian and includes instruments such as the bamboo flute, metallophone and bronze pot gongs. Due to its strong political message of American and Western imperialism and explicit lyrics and choreography depicting violence against/conquering of indigenous people,
World Power is seen as one of Morris's more controversial pieces. The finale contains images of distinct unease: an impatient stamping motif and verses ending with a retreat into the wings, heads tilting backwards, dancers falling down and being dragged on the floor and hands shielding faces, as if in horror. Morris is also a ballet choreographer, most notably with the
San Francisco Ballet, for which he has created eight works. He has also received commissions from such companies as
American Ballet Theatre,
Boston Ballet, and the
Paris Opera Ballet. He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the
Metropolitan Opera, the
New York City Opera,
English National Opera, and the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, among others. He directed and choreographed
King Arthur for English National Opera in June 2006, and in May 2007 he directed and choreographed
Orfeo ed Euridice for the Metropolitan Opera. He is the recipient of 11 honorary doctorates. Notable works by Morris include
Gloria (1981), set to
Vivaldi's "Gloria";
Championship Wrestling (1985), based on an essay by
Roland Barthes; ''
L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1988); Dido and Aeneas (1989); The Hard Nut (1991), his version of The Nutcracker set in the 1970s; Grand Duo
(1993); The Office
(1995); Greek to Me
(2000); a dance version of the Virgil Thomson–Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts (2001); the ballet A Garden
(2001); V
(2002) and All Fours
(2004). In 2006, he premiered his Mozart Dances
, commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival and Mostly Mozart Festival in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart; and in 2008, his controversial Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare'', set to Prokofiev's recently discovered, original scenario and score, had its premiere. In 2011, he premiered the 150th work of his professional career,
Festival Dance at his dance center in Brooklyn. Morris and his Dance Group collaborated with cellist
Yo-Yo Ma in
Falling Down Stairs, a film by Barbara Willis Sweete available on volume 2 of Ma's Emmy-winning
Inspired by Bach series. There, Morris choreographed a dance based on Bach's Third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, which Ma performs. Sweete's film depicts the performance as well as the evolution of the dance. Morris has also collaborated with visual artists such as
Isaac Mizrahi,
Howard Hodgkin,
Charles Burns and Stephen Hendee. In 2001 his company moved into its first permanent headquarters in the United States, the
Mark Morris Dance Center, in
Brooklyn, at 3 Lafayette Avenue in the
Fort Greene neighborhood. 2001 also marked the establishment of the School at the Mark Morris Dance Center. In addition the Mark Morris Dance Group, the center houses rehearsal space for the dance community, outreach programs for local children and persons with Parkinson's disease, and a school offering dance classes to students of all ages. Morris is the subject of a biography,
Mark Morris (1993), by dance critic
Joan Acocella. In 2001, he published ''L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: A Celebration'', a volume of photographs and critical essays. In 2013, Morris was the first choreographer and dancer to be the music director of the
Ojai Music Festival. In 2017, Morris premiered
Pepperland, a commissioned production based on the music of
The Beatles at
Royal Court Liverpool marking the 50th anniversary of the release of ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. In 2019, Morris published
Out Loud: A Memoir, written with
Wesley Stace. In 2022, Morris premiered
The Look of Love, a production based on the music of
Burt Bacharach. ==Honors and awards==