When I was a kid, I listened to Broadway cast albums over and over until I knew not just the songs – their melodies and lyrics – but every intonation, breath, and pause in the performances. Those recordings were treasured possessions, like dog-eared, beloved childhood books. I knew the exact way that Peter Gallagher sang “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, down to the places where he paused for breath. 

I have those memories because that music was recorded and preserved. But one can’t lovingly dog-ear a dance number. Enter the organization American Dance Machine for the 21st Century, whose mission is preserving and re-staging original Broadway choreography. It does that by working with choreographers and dancers who themselves worked with – or performed in productions directed by – choreographers such as Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. This is a very, very noble mission. As a lover of musical theater, I basically think it is the equivalent of missionary work. Mother Theresa did very important work, but she didn’t choreograph Damn Yankees. American Dance Machine is behind Gotta Dance!, a dance revue at the Stage 42 theater this summer, which re-stages 17 songs from Broadway’s musicals by canonical musical theater choreographers.

The revue includes classics like “Cool” from West Side Story. There’s the Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse number from Singin’ in the Rain, danced by RJ Higton and Deanna Doyle, and “Pas de Deux” from An American in Paris with Barton Cowperthwaite and Sara Esty, while “All I Need is the Girl” from Gypsy, features an endearing Deanna Doyle as Louise and RJ Higton as a nicely exuberant Tulsa.

One of the great things about American Dance Machine is that they don’t just revive the classics; they also re-stage numbers from lesser-known musicals. I was happy to discover a trio of high-intensity, jazz-inflected pieces from the set-in-a-swing-club musical Contact (which premiered Off-Broadway in 1999 before transferring to Broadway in 2000) and a number from the musical revue Smokey Joe's Cafe. A standout in the Contact sequences is Barton Cowperthwaite, whose sleek, suave presence makes him perfectly suited to the show’s late-night, big-city atmosphere of sad, lonely people dancing in beautiful clothes. Watching him, I found myself thinking: someone needs to cast this man in a film noir.

But what really made me sit up in my seat were three songs from the 1999 musical Swing!, the jazz revue musical conceived by Paul Kelly with songs from greats like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman – “Swing, Brother, Swing,” “Sing, Sing, Sing,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing [If It Ain’t Got That Swing].” The three dances are completely electric; it felt like everyone in the audience was (appropriately) jazzed. The source material is vibrant and explosive, and that made the Swing! numbers feel less like something being carefully and reproduced (which a few of the numbers in the revue felt like), and more like the dances that were being performed live, anew; discovered by the performers and ignited into reality. The featured dancer for Swing! is Samantha Siegel, who’s a magnetic performer, able to somehow connect with the entire audience while jumping seven feet up and diagonally into the air.

Another stand out performer is Kate Louissaint, who absolutely blows the doors off of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” from Bubbling Brown Sugar, a 1976 musical revue containing songs from Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. Her performance is a major highlight of the evening -- her voice is clear and full of energy; she felt in command of, and at home with, the language of swing.

The big, show-stopping centerpiece of the revue is “The Music and the Mirror,” which was the big show-stopping centerpiece of A Chorus Line, the landmark musical created by choreographer Michael Bennett with music by Marvin Hamlisch. “The Music and the Mirror” is the most elaborately produced sequence in Gotta Dance!, and, not coincidentally, the most immersive number of the evening.

Anyone reading a review of a Broadway dance revue will know the premise of A Chorus Line. But for those among Gen Z who accidentally navigated to this page – the musical follows a group of dancers auditioning for spots in the chorus of a Broadway musical including Cassie, who used to be a star dancer, but now after a failed acting career, is back to audition for the chorus. They’re all being evaluated by the director Zach, a disembodied voice in the darkness. He thinks Cassie’s too talented and experienced for the chorus. Cassie says all she wants is the chance to dance/perform. “Music and the Mirror” was made famous by – and basically belongs to – the dancer Donna McKechnie, who originated Cassie’s role in A Chorus Line, and worked closely with Michael Bennett. Watching her, even in old, grainy YouTube videos, you can see how sensational she was. McKechnie is unique – she somehow combines balletic grace, expressiveness as an actress, and explosive physical energy while making it seem like her entire body weighs 12 pounds. She’s a difficult performer to emulate; she might as well be an alien from another planet, a planet where they dance all day, because no human being moves like she can. McKechnie was directly involved in the restaging of the number, which is performed in the revue by acclaimed dancer Jessica Lee Goldyn. Goldyn – who previously played Cassie in the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line – does a fantastic job, As both an actress and a dancer, she channels the character’s exhaustion, hunger, and fierce need to dance.  

The most successful numbers in Gotta Dance! are not necessarily the ones that feel most dutifully reconstructed, but the ones that feel least like reconstruction at all. Most of them do; a few don’t, and sometimes that’s just because there was one Gene Kelly on earth, and we’re not going to get another one. When the staging shifts from a kind of respectful class presentation to something that resembles a fully inhabited, embodied performance, the evening becomes less about archival preservation and more about the immediate pleasure of watching choreography live again: present tense, unselfconscious, and fully alive.