Choreographer Mark Morris didn’t hesitate when the British city of Liverpool asked him to create a new dance for the 2017 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

“I said yes, obviously,” says Morris, whose Brooklyn-based Mark Morris Dance Group has been widely acclaimed since its founding in 1980.

Which is not to say he was entirely sure how his interpretation of the Beatles’ legendary album would go down in their hometown, Morris adds.

“We opened the festival,” he says of the 2017 premiere of “Pepperland,” which the Mark Morris Dance Group brings to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills for four performances Friday through May 18. “We were scheduled for the first night, and I finished it, for many reasons, very late. It was a short run-up time to present this from when we were asked.

“So we opened it, and it was a giant hit,” Morris says. “I really had no idea until other people watched. And then, you know, we didn’t know what to expect with a crowd in Liverpool except they’d love it or hate it.”

He laughs, and then continues.

“It could go either way, love it or hate it, while having a couple of drinks in the theater, which is a great thing to do,” Morris says. “So it was a relief to me.”

The rest of the performances in Liverpool went equally well.

“It was in a converted casino,” Morris says. “It was really kind of randy, and there was a bar that was open through the whole thing. People were screaming, and then a bunch of teenagers came.

“And then everybody, you know, everybody in Liverpool either is related to or slept with one of the Beatles,” Morris says, joking. “It’s like everybody was at the opening night of (Stravinsky’s then-radical ballet) ‘Rite of Spring,’ something like that. Half of it’s fabricated, of course.”

Since then, “Pepperland” has become a frequent part of the Morris company’s repertoire, though it has not been done for several years. The troupe most recently toured with “The Look of Love,” a piece built around the music of Burt Bacharach.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Morris, 68, talked about how he and composer Ethan Iverson adapted the music of “Sgt. Pepper’s” for a contemporary dance, his earliest memories of that album, and why he insists on live accompaniment for almost every dance he’s ever created.

Q: How do you begin to tackle a collection of songs like those on “Sgt. Pepper’s”?

A: So there were a couple of months where I didn’t start it because we didn’t have the rights (to the music). When we started getting those, I would work somewhat with the recordings, because that’s what Ethan was doing, and then working on the extremely varied and unusual orchestrations of these pieces.

Q: Unusual, because you and Ethan wanted to blend new material based on the album into the existing songs you chose?

A: I don’t know if it’s a dozen songs or something; it’s a lot. And they’re all treated very differently; otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. Otherwise, you just put on the record and dance around, and I’m not interested in that.

Q: Half of the score had new arrangements of songs on the album, like “A Day in the Life” and the title track, and half had entirely new numbers inspired by the album?

A: I don’t know. I don’t like to use the word “inspired,” but Ethan might. “Based on.” It’s certainly based on what is going on, the chord progressions and the rhythms and all that. So none of the songs, very few of the songs, sound the way you would expect them to, thank God. That’s the thrill.

There’s new material within a bunch of the songs. We did it very openly and very freely. It’s really quite amazing. It’s its own music world that’s based on “Sgt. Pepper’s,” same thing with the dances. You just make sense as you go along.

Q: The instrumentation for it caught my eye: A singer, soprano sax, trombone, keyboards, percussion — and a theremin. It’s not often you have a theremin, I’d think.

A: Well, it’s not often you need one. Or want one. It’s like bagpipes. When do you want bagpipes, you know?

Q: It sounds like you and Ethan deconstructed and reconstructed the album, in a sense.

A: We each did songs that we particularly liked and objected to songs that we didn’t like as much, and worked that out. Who’s doing it? Who’s singing? Who’s playing what? Why does this work? Does this make sense?

It just was making a program out of something that was already a program to listen to on a record. There’s some stuff that didn’t make sense, and there’s some stuff I don’t think is so good.

It was them (the Beatles) in the studio with no pressure to perform and all the money in the world. It was great. That’s such a fascinating and interesting and long-lived recording. It’s amazing music.

Q: You were 10 or 11 when “Sgt. Pepper’s” came out. What are your earliest memories of hearing it?

A: It was thrilling. Thrilling. I was 10 or something. I was just getting sex-oriented. And my sisters were both squealers, which is one reason they, the Beatles, stopped performing. They couldn’t hear their (bleeping) music. I’m not a lifelong devotee of the Beatles. I don’t listen to them often.

But it’s wonderfully written. The super praise that Paul McCartney has gotten over the years is justified. He’s a great, great songwriter. I thought he was cute. These days, I’m much more interested in Yoko Ono than people were allowed to be at the time.

Q: You’ve got the Beatles and now the Bacharach scores. I’m curious what the difference is for you between popular music like that and the classic pieces you’ve used from people like Vivaldi or Bach.

A: First of all, lots of music is popular and has been popular for hundreds and hundreds of years. A great deal of music from the opera, particularly the 19th century, as well as baroque and early classical was popular music. Everybody knew those tunes. They were part of what people sang on the street, in the tavern. Because there weren’t recordings, need I remind you.

I just choreograph to music that I love. I can’t work with what I don’t like. It’s not complicated, but it’s very multifarious and very interesting, the range of music that I use, and the range of music that exists in the world. And I don’t like to use the records that everybody uses.

There are phases that, God forbid, choreographers go through where everybody (uses the same music). You know, Philip Glass. And I love Philip, he’s a friend of mine, but I don’t think of his music. Also, oh, Arvo Pärt, for example. There’s fads that go through whatever music is popular. And that very often makes choreographers mostly kind of dumb and ill-prepared.

They just dance to what they hear, and there isn’t a great deal of subtlety in the selection of music, or sophistication, I find, in the choice of a lot of choreographers. I want music I haven’t already thought about and rejected. (Laughs.)

Q: The costumes your dancers wear for this are so vivid and bright. Tell me about those elements, costumes, staging and other choices that enhance the choreography and music.

A: It’s a particular style that’s not unaffected by the period. The patterns and the colors, the costumes I’ve worked with a lot. We wanted people to look great. It’s very bright colors, basically the palette from the album, and also monochrome. It’s black and white, sort of op art. And then there’s sort of pop stuff.

Then the set is very, very simple. Sort of shiny aluminum mountain ranges in the back, made from those metallic blankets that they wrap around you when you’re dying at the end of a marathon. They’re like space blankets, to prevent hypothermia.

Q: How hard is it to find a theremin player?

A: Well, it can be. Ethan heard this guy play, and he was fabulous. It was heartbreaking, you know — some of the music he plays on the theremin is just astounding and beautiful. You know, it’s very hard to play. You have to pretty much have perfect pitch, and it can still go haywire sometimes.

Q: That’s the excitement of live music.

A: Yeah it is, exactly. And dancing. Nobody accepts recorded dancing to live music. Actually, they probably would. People see dance in such a low state. But you think nothing of going to the ballet, and they’re playing some recording of a big orchestra. It’s like that’s just (garbage).

Of course, there are reasons for it. It costs way more and there are way more personalities involved. But to me, it’s like you watch “Avatar” on your phone. First of all, don’t watch it at all. What do you do, what are we after here? As little as possible, as little of an experience as we can handle? No, it should be the opposite of that. A piano recital should make you lose your mind at how great it is. It’s just you and the piano. That’s my whole raison d’être, I have to tell you: everybody alive while you’re alive.