Making his mark.

Even with a $6 million dance center opening this month and a new book celebrating his choreography, Mark Morris isn't about to rest on his laurels

One night after attending a performance of the Mark Morris Dance Group at New York's Kennedy Center, editor Matthew Lore and writer Jeffrey Escoffier marveled at the spectacle they had witnessed. The ballet was L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, set to Handel's glorious score. "I just remenber being flabbergasted at the expansiveness of it," recalls Lore. "I remenber great joy, engagement, and wonder. I was so moved by it." Simultaneously they both agreed, "There should be a book."

Three years later there is a book--titled Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: A Celebration, published this spring by Marlowe and Co. The ballet, choreographed in Brussels in 1988, is arguably Morris greatest achievement: a full evening's work for 24 dancers that is unabashedly euphoric in tone, with live chorus and orchestra backed by Adrianne Lobel's geometrically brilliant sets. The book captures the ballet's essence through photographs, essays, and the drawings of William Blake.

"Nobody else is making a modern dance work based upon oratorios by Handel that are set to poems by Milton that have been illustrated by Blake," says Lore. "Three titans of historical culture precede Mark to the table." In selecting photographs, the authors pored over a thousand shots of the ballet taken during a 12-year period.

In many ways, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is the grand choreographic centerpiece in the career of Morris, whose company is celebrating its 20th season this year. When the dance world's former enfant terrible is asked whether he thought his original pickup group in 1980 would ever make it this far, he answers flatly, "No. It's still hard to fathom, but tell you, it gets better all the time."

But best of all is the realization of the Mark Morris Dance Center, a huge new complex in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Fort Greene that will house Morris's company. Constructed at a cost of $6 million (with funding from corporate donations, foundations, government subsidies, and, as Morris says, "some very generous private people"), the 31,000-square-foot center will house studios, offices, and performance spaces, with additional inexpensive rental studios to be provided for other dance companies hurt by New York's real estate squeeze. "In June we're planning to have a big opening, a ribbon-cutting thing. I'll really believe we're there when I'm rehearsing there," says Morris.

One of the center's goals that Morris has been adamant about achieving is exposing the Brooklyn community (including gay and lesbian audiences) to the arts. "It's nutty the way the arts operate in this country," says Morris. "It's sad that arts are seen as a luxury instead of as a necessity, which is how I see it." As a Seattle public school student, he remembers being bused to museums, concerts, and dance presentations, and he hopes to revive that idea. "That's where I learned not to applaud after the national anthem and how to be quiet, even though you occasionally had fits of laughter," says Morro.

His latest string of successes includes a much-acclaimed, sold-out March season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the creation of Gong, a world premiere ballet for the American Ballet Theatre in May. However, lest anyone think all this will prompt the choreographer to rest on a divan and munch a boxful of bonbons, Morris emphasizes that he still leads his troupe on the road for half the year, sometimes on one-night stands, to survive. "We really can't rely on anyone but ourselves," says Morris. "And what's more American than that?"

Carman also writes for The New York Times.

Find more on the Mark Morris Dance Group at www.advocate.com