Grant a wish

BEST IN SHOW Lauren Grant strikes a pose in Mozart Dances.

Photo: Stephanie Berger/MMDG

[Ed note: This story has been extended with online bonus content.]

Lauren Grant is a mere slip of a dancer—a 4'11" powerhouse who moves with a command and silky fluency perhaps never better captured than in Mark Morris’s Mozart Dances. Raised in Highland Park, Illinois, Grant began dancing with the Mark Morris Dance Group in late 1996 as a snowflake and flower in The Hard Nut. Despite her small stature (which forced her to give up her first love, ballet), she has overcome the physical odds to become one of Morris’s most featured dancers. Married to fellow company member David Leventhal, Grant, 32, performs next week in Mostly Mozart’s much-welcome reprisal of Mozart Dances, a three-part stunner. Grant spoke to TONY about what it’s like to be an integral part of Morris’s golden team.

You graduated from NYU in 1996, the same year you started dancing with Mark Morris. How did you get a job so quickly?
Back then they had invitation-only auditions and the company called NYU to ask if they had anyone to send. I graduated in May and in December I auditioned to be a snowflake and a flower in The Hard Nut, and I got the job. They thought, Who is this wildly short person who’s good? Let’s try her. In January or February, they needed people for L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, and they didn’t take me. I remember asking why and someone said, “You’re just too short.” He had never used anyone as short as me. I’m barely 4'11". I’m really short. I was sad about it, but then in March of 1997, Mark was making up Platee and they needed a few extra people. I was perfect because they needed little critters from the swamp and what better person than a 4'11" froglike creature to play a toad? I was also a philosopher, which was hysterical—I looked like a little old man with a fake beard. I got to work with him for months; he got to know me, and I took his class, and he yelled at me everyday. I got to go on tour. Then in March of ’98, they were doing L’Allegro in New Zealand. [Laughs] Apparently, I was tall enough by then so I did that. It was the first time I got to really dance and look like one of them. I wasn’t in a philosopher costume or a toad costume, I wasn’t in a flower or snowflake costume. I was in a dress doing technical dancing and I think they saw that and realized, “We can do this. We can use this person even though she’s the shortest thing we’ve ever seen.” [Laughs]

Did you have to unlearn a lot of your training when you worked on Platee?
Yeah. You know, I teach a lot now, and it’s so difficult because there isn’t really a technique, but there’s a way that you approach dancing and acting and music that is very specifically Mark. That is exactly what he tried to teach me. There was so much acting in Platee, and that was what I was yelled at about. He wanted very realistic acting. There’s this part I’ll never forget: As the three Graces, we each fall. I was falling in a way so that I wouldn’t hurt myself. Mark wanted me to fall for real and it hurt every time. He doesn’t want the fake thing happening onstage. He thinks that is funnier and he doesn’t want you to comment so much on it, like, “Oops, I fell! Isn’t that funny, audience?” I’m still learning from him. Every day we take class, he works on those things: how we approach movement—we take ballet class every day. Musically, we always have to finish the combinations on time. Which gets irritating.

Why?
Let’s say something ends with a little balance: You want to balance until you find it, so that ankle, that foot and all the muscles are engaged. But when the music ends with Mark, you end in fifth, arms down, done. That’s the whole approach to the work. The work is dancing in the way that he prescribes to the music, not using your own idea of musicality. And that’s fine because he illuminates the score. You need to learn how to obey his vision. [Laughs] So, yes, it can be frustrating, but I understand exactly why he does it. Sometimes when you’re around for a long time, you feel like, Okay I’ve learned the lesson. Can I just balance?

How close is your natural musicality to his?
I think I’ve always paid attention to timing and I’ve always liked to be rhythmic. The music helped fuel me when I was dancing as a little bunhead. I feel like I respond to rhythm so it’s not hard for me just to note it in Mark’s way. But the thing about the part I have in Mozart Dances is that I had a little bit of choice. It was really challenging in a wonderful way when he choreographed it because it happened very fast. I got to play around a little bit just with the nuance or the quality of the step. Not a lot. [Laughs]

What will he say after a show?
If something’s good, he doesn’t usually say anything. If he sees something that’s not part of his vision, he’ll say something. We just did it in London. It could be something simple like, “When you kick your legs, I want your arms to go down. Don’t take time with the arms.” Or there’s this difficult turning move with an extension at the end. He said, “I want that to be explosive at the end,” which, oh my God, I’m still working out. I don’t know if I can manifest that correction. It’s probably one of my hardest moves. So he’ll see somewhere that he wants a little something. I love that. I like to keep working on things. I don’t even know if I could stick around this long if I didn’t look at class the way I look at class, but every class is a chance to grow. Every tendu and every plié—I like trying something new. After this many years you just want to kill yourself, and that’s why this is working out for me. Mark likes to look at it that way too, and if you resent that, you’re going to be an unhappy person. I think for a few years I was a little bit. I was very frustrated in class. Starting Pilates helped a lot.

Mozart Dances is at the New York State Theater Wed 15–Aug 18.