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 has been making the summer rounds with some of its choicest repertory. The last of these performances is at Bryant Park on August 31. Morris’s best pieces proceed with a transparency—often a literal-mindedness—that belies their emotional weight. The program in Bryant Park presents his early stunner Gloria, 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