Exuberance lives in Morris at ADF

It's a good thing Mark Morris is such a fierce proponent of joy and laughter. While the go-go '80s and prosperous '90s were fertile ground for Morris' witty deconstructionist approach -- pure movement, found gestures and irony galore -- you could easily wonder whether our current Age of Anxiety might weigh him down.

Not a chance. The newest work on this weekend's ADF concert by Mark Morris Dance Group, the six-month-old "Italian Concerto," is a purely Morris-y joy that just might make you laugh. (Just for the sake of conjuring an image, picture the bright energy of Paul Taylor's "Esplanade.") Some of the dance movements here could be fairly described as swinging a fire hose, folding a large bedsheet and pulling paper cups out of a wall-mounted dispenser.

There's method to the madness, of course. With Colin Fowler giving a concert-quality performance of J.S. Bach's piano piece of the same name, the dancers perfectly capture every nuance and inflection in the music -- music that Morris' choreography so acutely observes and brings into physical form. If Morris were not a dancer, he'd surely be a musician.

The arc of Morris' dance career roughly parallels that of ADF in Durham. Three years after the festival moved to the Triangle, Morris started his company in New York, in 1980, and began to change dance forever. A strong assertion, yes, but the festival would have been hard-pressed this year to give its Samuel H. Scripps ADF Award to a choreographer who has had a more lasting impact on the field. As with Taylor a generation earlier, Morris' influence is now so deeply ingrained as to be taken for granted; you see it without seeing it in so many choreographers who have followed.

To pick only one hallmark of Morris' intensely visual style, you might point to canonic movement -- that is, when a movement is performed not in unison but in a sequence, with each dancer starting the move at a different time. It's a basic building block that Morris elevates to the level of high math, and when his dancers execute these patterns with the precision his work demands, the syncopations are a wonder.

Morris' remains a singular vision partly because of this deep feeling for the music and the sophistication of his musical tastes. Even his harshest, most humorless critics can't overlook the top-flight musicians Morris chooses to collaborate with --including in this weekend's performances -- and the unerring choices he makes for his dances. You don't decide to try to vivify a Bartok string quartet on a whim.

Morris' music-dance intelligence shines like a gold thread through an ADF program that surveys 14 years of his creations: from the bubbly Bach that inspires the new "Italian Concerto" to the warm Schumann cello pieces that accompany "The Argument" (1999), from the jagged Bartok String Quartet No. 4 that sets a dark tone for "All Fours" (2003) to the ethereal Lou Harrison music that conjures such a wondrous atmosphere for "Grand Duo" (1993). All of it is performed live in the Page Auditorium pit by an ace team of musicians anchored by the superlative pianist Steven Beck.

If you can find a smarter evening of dance -- anywhere -- go buy a ticket.