Morris' presentation starts with a few plastic chairs set downstage. A dancer dressed as a technician in a boiler suit walks on, removes a standard lamp, and walks offstage. A few members of the audience clap sarcastically. In that moment, Morris delivers his aesthetic. He tells us: "You are watching my 2006 King Arthur, so don't expect fairies and the Holy Grail. Don't expect 'classical' performances or opera singers emoting. This is Purcell -- my contemporary, very today, very London, very New York." Moreover, it makes its American bow with Cal Performances, September 30, at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.

His stage pictures are always surprising. The huge Coliseum proscenium becomes a working studio. Dancers and singers arrive through false doors. Arthurian horses are wooden trestles dragged by dancers. Is this just a rehearsal? The chair backs have the letters K.A. painted on them. Maybe King Arthur will turn up and sit in the director's chair.

This use of stage as a rehearsal room is not new. We know it from Balanchine, we know it from the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1960s History Cycle at the Aldwych. Louis Malle did it in his movie Vanya on 42nd Street. But it still works, because Morris drives it full throttle.

When snow falls, performers bring on a snow bag. As he says, "It's a cheap snow bag. Why not."

Traditionally, opera staging tries to hide stage mechanics. Good stage managers learn to subtly mark the stage with discreet strips of black gaffer tape so that furniture and props can be laid down, and the preset defining guides be unnoticed by audiences. Morris refuses even this. His floor is a shameless display of multicolored lines and corners. We know that this patterning is for future settings, and we understand that all stage management must be visible. We also see the lighting grid. We see the back brick wall. These techniques from Brechtian and Poor Theatre are transferred to the rich production values of the newly refurbished Coliseum.

"I'm not high-tech. I don't like multi-media, tricksy productions with video screens," he says in an interview, and thanks to this spare aesthetic, the look is clean and satisfying. His dancers dress in contemporary street clothes sometimes mixed with armor and plumed helmets. It is not easy to define his movement vocabulary. In Nixon in China, which he choreographs to the music of Berkeley's John Adams, playing during the same season at the English National Opera, his dance language is inspired by Madame Mao's political ballet, The Red Detachment of Women. Here the parameters are loose.

Yes, there is a formal maypole scene at the end that allows English audiences a moment of pleasurable recognition, and yes, there are circle dances, reels, and references to Morris Dance, but the overall style is mainly barefoot contemporary with a spoof reference to ballet.

At moments Morris is sexually provocative. Dancers appear in underwear and, at the end of the first half, the whole ensemble seem to be naked in a mass love-in. The English titter, embarrassed. The look is always surprising. Clearly this collaboration with fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi works, as does Adrianne Lobel's stage design. She gives him his plastic chairs, steel deck, an elegant raised platform. I ask how the process works among the creative trio. "My designers listen to the music," Morris says. "I don't have a meeting and say, 'I need a red drape, et cetera.' We decide to do it in the theater."

The stripping away of self-conscious operatics leads to an almost utilitarian approach. "I'm tired of operas that have no chairs, where performers throw themselves against a wall," he says, placing the back of his hand to his forehead in mock anguish. "All that emoting!"

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