Malavika Sarukkai at the Baryshnikov Arts Center The Indian dancer Malavika Sarukkai describes what she does as "dynamic meditation." During "Yatra-Seeking," her performance at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on Thursday, that's what she delivered. Malavika Sarukkai in "Yatra-Seeking" at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan. The bharatanatyam performance was part of the White Light Festival. The 70-minute show, part of the White Light Festival, was a solo evening of bharatanatyam, one of India's classical dance forms, but Ms. Sarukkai was not alone. She was joined by five excellent musicians, including the transporting vocalist Chitrambari Krishnakumar. Swaths of shimmering fabric hung from the high rigging, emphasizing the verticality of the theater while framing a more intimate dancing area. Voice-overs introduced the stories and intentions of each of Ms. Sarukkai's four dances. "Stithi Gati," the title of the first piece, can be translated as "stillness movement," and her choreography stressed the relationship between those two states. Alternating between static poses and bursts of motion, this introductory work established the clarity of Ms. Sarukkai's dancing, her ability to define and shape space, and especially her uncommon rhythmic precision. Her rhythmic attunement, however, may have also been connected to how her toes kept curling up, seemingly to count, making the still sections not quite still. In "Raas" Ms. Sarukkai told how the god Krishna lured women into the forest to dance and then multiplied himself so that he could dance with each of them. Ms. Sarukkai became each woman, reacting to Krishna differently. She became Krishna, playing his flute. She showed us the women collectively, holding hands in a circle dance, and she showed us Krishna's transformation in their amazed reactions. Her fluttering hands, shaking as if she were heavily spicing a dish, represented the moonlight and also Krishna's attraction, which transformed from a worldly power to a spiritual one by the end. In the third section, "The Bird Song," Ms. Sarukkai translated into dance a poem about a bird, a metaphor for the spiritual journey of pilgrims in the sacred city of Benares. Sometimes her whole body was the bird, her arms riding currents of air; sometimes the bird was only her crossed hands, and she was watching it. Tabla drums contributed wing-flapping sounds of remarkable fidelity. But the greatest sense of flight came in the lift of her low jumps, like a sharp intake of breath. And the dance gained its greatest intensity as she sunk into a squat and began dropping her heels in a mesmeric rhythm. As the section closed, the lights focused in on Ms. Sarukkai's hands, one flickering like a flame - a thrilling moment. For the last dance, "Laya" (Sanskrit for "merging"), she said she was inspired by the architecture of temples at Khajuraho: teeming with life on the outside, bare and still and silent within. Although her choreography, the most sophisticated dance design of the evening, captured this contrast, it could have done so more intensely. The high excitement of an opening drum section only increased when the vocalist kicked in, but Ms. Sarukkai's energy fell after her jumping entrance and never again rose to the music's level. As the music slowed throughout, tightening, deepening, her dancing did not match its tension. By the end Ms. Sarukkai was balled up on the ground, as small as possible in her devotion. But this final moment was not entirely still, nor silent, nor dark. Ms. Sarukkai took her audience on a spiritual journey, but she could have taken us further.