Dancing for Mark: memories on a silver anniversary.

June Omura recalls her first exposure to Mark Morris: "When I was a sophomore in college and writing reviews, I saw the company at the second Next Wave Festival in the Lepercq Space at BALM. The program was Gloria, O Rangasayee, and Championship Wrestling after Roland Barthes, and it just blew me away. I'd never seen anything like it."

Joe Bowie's introduction happened like this: "I was doing the sound for an AIDS benefit in Boston. At the rehearsal Mark was walking though The Vacant Chair, wearing T-shirt and jeans. Tina Fehlandt was yelling, 'fabulous, fabulous,' and I didn't know what was going on. I didn't then understand what 'marking' was, and I couldn't believe that this dance had come from that rehearsal. Oh, Mark forgot to take his music cassette with him. I kept it."

Omura and Bowie will be there, and so will Gloria, when the Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates its 25th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this month. Since Omura's first BAM experience, the company has expanded downstairs to the Howard Gilman Opera House, performs exclusively to live music, and can draw on more than two decades of repertoire. Many of the dances in this run will be familiar, but casting changes are in the air. Morris, 49, has relinquished his two roles of Dido and the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas and turned over the assignments to Amber Darragh and Bradon McDonald. New to the home season will be a series of one-shot, "Solos, Duets, & Trios," revival programs presented at the Mark Morris Dance Center, a block away from BAM.

Omura and Bowie, both 41, are the senior members of MMDG, having joined in the late 1980s when the company was in residence in Brussels. She was a reformed ballet dancer. He had just spent two years with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Professionally, MMDG will always be their home.

"There have been some frightening times during these 17 years, when I did not know how to address difficulties and Mark was having trouble with me," Omura says. "But it's only gotten better as I've gotten older and learned more about myself."

Adds Bowie, 'I've never been happier. The camaraderie is wonderful now. When I joined, there was this tension between the newcomers and the dancers who had been there since the beginning. Mark's work lets you dance like an adult. You don't injure yourself onstage or dance while injured. Mark cares enough not to let that happen."

Both performers easily adjusted to Morris' aesthetic, which does not strive for a conventional look. "He has developed us so that we look more like ordinary human beings than dancers," says Omura. "What we do is real and honest. People think they can come up onstage and join us. We love [giving] that idea."

Morris has mellowed over the years, Omura notes. "Age-wise, he now has fewer peers in the company. It grounds Mark in an interesting way." And Bowie says, "His craft has just spun on. Without a great deal of excess, Mark will make a perfect choice in his choreography. There's more refinement now."

What they love most about dancing for MMDG boils down to this. "Mark has trained us to be his instrument," says Omura. "His modern work can only be expressed through us."

Could any dancer--or choreographer--ask for more?

MMDG dances March 8-25 at BAM. [e-mail]. For additional performance dates, see www.mmdg.org.

EDITED BY ALLAN ULRICH