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So, here I stand, hovering between past and present, almost fourty years after that mythic evening of July 6, 1962, when a group of very young choreographers showed their unpretentiously revolutionary work in the basement of a church on the south side of Washington Square in New York City. Here I am, not in Manhattan but in Brooklyn, not in a church but before the golden proscenium arch of the (packed) Howard Gilman's Opera House at BAM, and about to witness a choreographic revisiting of one of the most influential moments in dance history.

Tonight's concert is titled 'PASTForward.' It is the latest production by White Oak Dance Project, an evening length event directed by David Gordon. 'PASTForward' calls on history in two senses. It calls on history as reconstruction --the concert is directed as a guided tour of some central works by the toost influential choreographers from the Judson Dance Theater. A video by Charles Atlas narrated by Mikhail Baryshnikov himself guides the audience through what is nothing less than a slick staging of a televised documentary. Between video- clips featuring archival photos and foo tage, and oral testimonies from the choreographers, reconstructed dances from the 1960's unti12000 will be performed on stage by White Oak dancers and "dancers from the community."

The less obvious sense in which the evening cails on history is perhaps the most significant one. 'PASTForward' is a Iong overdue embracing by an American repertoire dance company of the insurmountable centrality of Judson Dance Theater within the cultural history of the 20th century. This embracing is certainly paradoxical -- most of Judson's work was emphatically pedestrian, openly political, radically democratic, and edging performance art: all factors that emphasize presence instead of representation, the force of the moment instead of economies of spectacle. The fact that the repertoire dance company engaging in this double calling of history is Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project gives the paradox a truly wild spin.

The Judson Dance Theater was never a company. But rather a Ioosely assembled (non)collective of choreogra- phers, performers, and dancers that in six years of activity at New York's Washington Square Church, shaped the dance to come and influenced the avant-garde since then. Some of its most central names -- Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Deborah Hay, David Gordon, Lucinda Childs, and the ever more crucial Steve Paxton -- were asked by Baryshnikov to contribute with a piece for the even ing. Some pieces performed in 'PASTForward' are reconstructions of the 1960's dances. Others were created as recently as 2000. In all, the level of engagement by the White Oak dancers is truly remarkable. From the most pedestrian works (in Steve Paxton's <:i>'Flat' from 1964, Baryshnikov masters stillness with uncanny refinement) to the most choreographed ones (Lucinda Child's 'Concerto,' 1993, flows perfectly), the pieces resurface with force.

However, every embracing of the past is a retelling of history. And every retelling happens from a specific point of view. in the case of dance's past, retelling must probe all the minute, yet inexorable, transformations endured by the body under the grinds of everydayness, in the case of Judson Dance Theater, retelling must depart from a point of view in which a deep critique of the social implications behind movement cannot be ignored. Assessing the works by Judson Dance Theater thus calls for a careful weaving of choreography with its social surroundings -- words and gestures, political agendas and iconic images, sounds and steps and hopes. Such a weaving is less choreographic than dramaturgical. Pleasingly, White Oak Dance Project embraced an open emphasis on dramaturgy. Unfortunately, it was here that the evening faltered.

There is a patina of pedagogy that verges on the annoying. The soundtrack that receives the audience before the evening starts is basically The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles, all circa 1968. In most of the reconstructed dances, large live-feed video projections occupy the backdrop. It is as if the audience could not be trusted with the pieces' subtleties; as if our eyes had to be seduced by the telescoping action of the video. Perhaps most disturbing is an overall sense of slick. Mark Franko once identified a split in Western theatrical dance in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque -- a split between "pedestrian" dances and "glorious" ones. The latter are informed by an emphasis on the demonstration of the dancer's charm, on a (mastered) capacity ofthe dancer to indicate he is indeed showing-off. This glorious dan is predicated on the glance, leaving le space for the duration of reason and thought. In their "pedestria aesthetic and hopes, in their investigations ofthe uncanny quality behind the most menial tasks, the Judson dance were less about glorious spectacle than about radical speculation. Unfortunately in 'PASTForward',speculation is placed by a glittering mirror, flattens out history for the sake of the safe image.