Seen It Once? That’s Just the Start

By Claudia La Rocco
The New York Times

NEXT month Dance Theater Workshop is remounting Miguel Gutierrez’s enthralling “Everyone,” seen at the Henry Street Settlement in March. Go, then go back: “Everyone” should be absorbed multiple times. But the chance to see it even twice is a luxury. Though recent initiatives at Dance Theater Workshop and elsewhere suggest that the tide is turning, contemporary dances still die quick, quiet deaths far too often.

Here are five other gems from 2007 worth bringing back at least once:

1. “Rammed Earth” made sublime use of the Chocolate Factory’s theater in September, but Tere O’Connor says his piece can work in many kinds of spaces. Let’s test that claim. It will run at the Baryshnikov Arts Center next September, but why stop there? All manner of buildings should house this fluid, gripping quartet, which includes Hilary Clark, a dancer you can’t see too often. (She was in another of the year’s smartest works, Luciana Achugar’s “Franny and Zooey,” to be revived in February at the Abrons Arts Center.)

2. A thoughtful meditation on aging, John Jasperse’s “Becky, Jodi and John,” needs to be seen as Mr. Jasperse, Jodi Melnick and Becky Hilton age — in ways graceful and incredibly, heartbreakingly human. Mr. Jasperse has a reputation for teasing surprises out of Dance Theater Workshop’s stage, as he did when this work opened in April, and I imagine there are more than a few tricks lurking up his sleeve, waiting for future showings.

3. “Feedforward,” David Neumann’s witty, moving rumination on athletics that opened at Dance Theater Workshop in October, was a feast for the mind and the eye. From an outstanding cast to luscious design elements, there’s too much here to digest in just a few sittings.

4. A mesmerizing exploration of Americans’ restlessness and love of epic landscapes, “C.L.U.E.,” by the duo robbinschilds, forced hard choices between its film and live performance components, which rarely coexist so happily. This color-saturated journey through California, which ran at Performance Space 122 this month, is a meta-road-trip for the mind.

5. In September a select few had a rare treat as the American expatriate Rob List performed one of his “Follies” at the Sideshow Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in conjunction with the American Abstract Artists exhibition “Material Matter.” With his tall, thin frame clad in a black suit, Mr. List sang a song, then had a haunting choreographic conversation with time, narrative and the gallery’s smooth white walls. It passed too quickly. Like all these dances, it’s a conversation that needs to resume, and soon.