Time was, a major dance troupe didn’t show up at a series of local parks to compete with wilting summer heat, shrieking toddlers, and the distractions of picnic noshing to offer us, free, their best. But since arts funding collapsed in the wake of the pandemic, even the Mark Morris Dance Group is making the summer rounds with some of its choicest repertory—in New York City at Brooklyn Bridge Park (August 3) and Bryant Park (August 31). Take advantage while it lasts. Morris’s best pieces proceed with a transparency—often a literal-mindedness—that belies their emotional weight. This summer the most unmissable of these is Gloria, at Bryant Park, to the agitated and doleful Vivaldi mass. The 1984 tragicomedy raises its fists against an unstoppable power that cures and kills at will. —Apollinaire Scherr