Baryshnikov dancing Judson: old and new works by seven seminal Judson choreographers were featured in a touring show put together by Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project

I went to see Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project at BAM the week of June 4 because the work of seven so-called Judson choreographers was featured. The program was called "Past/Forward," meaning that post-Judson work by the choreographers, up in fact to the present, was included. I often put myself out to see the work of my time, or work by those of my time as it keeps evolving (or not), generally seeing little else. As a true old-timer, I tend to believe that all that came after is crap. In the case of the Judson revolution in dance-making, I may actually be right. Oh, I know there are individually brilliant works around, and of course there have been for years. But it takes a group to make a revolution. And revolutions happen probably only once or twice a century. And for those of us leavened on the art of revolutionary times, there can never be anything like it again. Not unless it comes again. And the 1960s will never come again.

Judson revisited under the auspices of Mikhail Baryshnikov is a sort of archival display, a retrospective exhibition, with differences so noteworthy as to make the subject new or unrecognizable. A fabulous displacement in context changes everything. The original performing space of the funky, cavernous, high-ceilinged, peaked-roof sanctuary room of Judson Church on Washington Square, with its woolly downtown in-crowd audience whose wild enthusiasm and educated interest were not least of what composed the revolution, was a setting integral to the work itself. Likewise, the grandly formal, corporate-sponsored proscenium stage at BAM, with its throngs attracted chiefly by the fame of a great ex-ballet dancer, is an arena that completely defines what we see there. This is Judson gone Hollywood, theatricalized in ways that fully contradict the tenets of Judson's origins and early performances in its heyday, 1962-64.

Anti-spectacle, anti-entertainment, anti-star image, anti-proscenium frontality, anti-expression or narrative, anti-dance movement itself as traditionally understood--here was a dissenting canon as insurrectional as the revolution in dance ushered in by the barefoot, ballet-hating Isadora Duncan in the late 19th century. Her pioneering work would be refined by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, then Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham (both schooled as Denishawn dancers in the 1930s), and in their wake by the Humphrey disciple Jose Limon. At last Merce Cunningham, formerly a Graham dancer, introduced in the 1950s a dance esthetic that was entirely new. It was off Cunningham's back that the Judson choreographers leapfrogged. Among them were the seven represented by Baryshnikov at BAM: David Gordon, Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs and Deborah Hay. Cunningham's studio at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue was actually a launching pad. There Robert Dunn, a composer and follower of Cunningham's partner, John Cage, and the husband of one of Cunningham's dancers, Judith Dunn, taught the class in choreography that led to the first evening of performances at Judson Church, on July 6, 1962. Much as Cunningham was admired and his aleatory method of composition a class expedient, his maintenance of the old bedrock of dance in technical training, whether ballet or modern, was ditched entirely in the Judson experiment.

The new and unprecedented Judson look was movement lifted from everyday actions of ordinary people, including dancers when they are not dancing. "Pedestrian" was the word, and still is, for the new "dance." A pedestrian is a walker and there was plenty of plain walking in early Judson work. Steve Paxton, a Cunningham company member (1961-64) all the while he was rebelling with the Judson group, particularly loved walking. And sitting and walking. In his 1964 solo Flat he sat and walked around and studiously removed his "costume" of shoes, jacket, shirt and pants, hanging them on hooks taped to his body; then put his clothes back on, ever continuing sitting and walking. Sometimes he sat or stood still. It was very boring. Boring was tremendously exciting in the revolution. Flat is one of only three pieces transplanted intact from the Judson of 1962-64 in Baryshnikov's Judson archive evening. And as its updated soloist, Baryshnikov makes it far from boring. Not because he doesn't follow its instructions to the letter, performing it in the required impassive pedestrian "boring" manner. But because ... well, because he is Baryshnikov. Just the question of why he is doing this at all makes it pretty interesting.

Anyway, boring has long ceased to be exciting. A precise replica of an old Judson concert in its original or similar setting would make any old-timer sigh. We like simply the memory, and a belief that being there was a sacred privilege. The new thing is what Baryshnikov is doing with it all. He's the real creator here. With techno-resources, financial backing, much experience as an artistic director (for nine years at the American Ballet Theatre) and a cultivated passion for dancing in the works of postmodern choreographers, he has forged an entertaining, commercially viable program out of an unlikely piece of history. For himself and his White Oak company of professionally trained younger dancers, he has dusted off several old, prosaic, Minimalist treasures, intact and/or adapted by the intrepid Judson survivors, and integrated them superbly with examples of their work from the 1970s till now.