BAM Affiliation Mark Morris was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, WA. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) in 1980 and has since created more than 130 works for the company. From 1988 to 1991, he was Director of Dance while MMDG was the national company of Belgium at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris is also much in demand as a ballet choreographer, having created eight works for the San Francisco Ballet since 1994 and having received numerous commissions from other renowned companies. He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Morris was named a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991. In 2001, the Mark Morris Dance Group opened its first permanent US home in Brooklyn. In addition to being a space for Morris and the dancers to work, the Mark Morris Dance Center houses rehearsal space for the dance community, outreach programs for local children and seniors, and a school offering affordable dance classes to students of all ages. MMDG has also maintained and strengthened its ties to several cities around the world, most notably its West Coast home, Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA and its Midwest home, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. MMDG is noted for its commitment to live music, a feature of every performance on its full international touring schedule since 1996. Most recently, Mark Morris: An Evening of Britten and Purcell was presented at BAM during the 2017 Spring Season.