Out Loud

A Memoir

By: Mark Morris, Wesley Stace

Narrated by: Mark Morris

Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

From the most brilliant and audacious choreographer of our time, the exuberant tale of a young dancer’s rise to the pinnacle of the performing arts world, and the triumphs and perils of creating work on his own terms - and staying true to himself

Before Mark Morris became “the most successful and influential choreographer alive” (The New York Times), he was a six-year-old in Seattle cramming his feet into Tupperware glasses so that he could practice walking on pointe. Often the only boy in the dance studio, he was called a sissy, a term he wore like a badge of honor. He was unlike anyone else, deeply gifted and spirited.

Moving to New York at 19, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Audiences in 1976 had the luxury of Merce Cunningham’s finest experiments with time and space, of Twyla Tharp’s virtuosity, and Lucinda Childs' genius. Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. No one wanted to break the spell or miss a thing, because “if you missed anything, you missed everything”. This collective, led by Morris’ fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group.

Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorker’s critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelo’s David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative.

Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit, Morris’ memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold, a brilliant maverick who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.

©2019 Mark Morris and Wesley Stace (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Morris is frank, joyful, and, at times, provocative.... A fascinating memoir that will engage anyone interested in dance, movement, or the creative process." (Booklist)

“The absorbing story of an uncompromising genius of the dance, as revelatory and intense as his extraordinary choreography.” (Salman Rushdie)

“Out Loud is a golden opportunity to get inside the mind of one of the great musicians of our time and also into the history and progress of modern dance itself.” (Isaac Mizrahi)

“Out Loud is the story of a brilliant, complex artist, a keen observer and interpreter of the world around him, guided by one constant purpose: to create dance. This hard-to-put-down book illuminates the mind of an irreducible visionary and the art form that shaped him.” (Yo-Yo Ma)

Viva la Mark!4%[)

Wonderful to hear Mark's voice taking us aling through his so far, his creative process and hope for the future.
I knew when I danced with him in Eliot Feld that he was a rare bird and that he would fly far.

Read it, loved it, recommend it!

A fabulous book about an extraordinary artist. Looking forward to reading it again and again.

Great!!

If you like MM, def listen to this book. Wonderful to have him narrate his own story!

Sensational!!!

Terrific book made all the better by Mark Morris’s narration. A must listen! Funny, incredibly articulate and profoundly written.