A New Incarnation of Mark Morris’s Singular Dance

At the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, there is a video of Mark Morris dancing a solo called “O Rangasayee” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in 1984. The solo goes on for twenty minutes, accompanied by a recording of the great Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi. She is singing a raga by the late-eighteenth-century composer Sri Tyagaraja. “O Rangasayee,” Subbulakshmi calls out again and again in a clear, warbling voice, invoking the reclining incarnation of Vishnu. “When I call you earnestly, can’t you respond by uttering ‘O’ and appearing?” Like many Carnatic lyrics, it is a song of longing. Structurally, it is a massive edifice built out of variations on a theme.