Review: Gotta Dance! Hands Broadway Hoofers a Kickline of Classics

Since its premiere in 1959, Broadway has seen six productions of Gypsy—but only one without Jerome Robbins’s original choreography. Whether Camille A. Brown reinvented that wheel successfully in last season’s Audra McDonald vehicle is for you to debate over a Sardi’s martini. But if we want our revivals to be more than museum pieces, we have to let new hands touch precious artifacts. Progress, however, is what necessitates preservation, and American Dance Machine’s mission to preserve makes a sweet entertainment like Gotta Dance! feel as significant as it is fun.

The York Theatre production, now at the Theatre at St. Jean’s, is directed by Nikki Feirt Atkins (founder and producing artistic director of American Dance Machine for the 21^st Century) and four-time Tony-nominated choreographer Randy Skinner. Together, they’ve built a Shangri-La for musical-theater purists, and for Broadway dancers looking to tick items off their bucket lists.

There’s Robbins’s simmering West Side Story ensemble number “Cool” (led by Drew Minard). There’s Bob Fosse’s “Manson Trio,” the sexy-cheeky-menacing sequence from Pippin that became one of Broadway’s most iconic TV commercials (Taylor Stanley, Afra Hines, and Georgina Pazcoguin perform it here with its signature dark whimsy). There’s Christopher Wheeldon’s 2015 Pas de Deux from An American in Paris, a spotlight for both ballet and today’s great choreographers (Pazcoguin and Barton Cowperthwaite do justice to a number that Broadway stars Leanne Cope and Robbie Fairchild molded into a modern classic).

Fidelity is the goal for each, and even without all the bells and whistles of a full production, the creative team works in sync with the dancers to satisfy the brief. Costume designer Marlene Olson Hamm should be applauded for the sheer number of sartorial homages she crafted for the show’s 17 numbers. Lighting designer Ken Billington sets the proper mood for each (dark and shadowy for Pippin, a cool blue for An American in Paris), while Brian C. Staton (projections) and Noah Glaster (props) efficiently match backdrops with the bare essentials for scenery. After all, you don’t need more than a red dress reflected in free-standing mirrors for an audience of Broadway diehards to start cheering for what’s about to happen.

That’s right. Gotta Dance! pays tribute to the apex of all Broadway dance musicals, A Chorus Line, and Jessica Lee Goldyn is the Cassie that performs its breathless showstopper “The Music and the Mirror” (famously choreographed by Michael Bennett and performed to Tony-winning acclaim by Donna McKechnie). She also channels her inner Gwen Verdon as Charity Hope Valentine for Sweet Charity’s “I’m a Brass Band” (another Fosse number), solidifying her as the show’s standout triple threat. Jess LeProtto, meanwhile, is the MVP on the men’s side, gliding like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain’s “Moses Supposes” and showing off his pristine vocals as Tulsa in Gypsy’s “All I Need Is the Girl.” Robbins’s choreography is impeccably unadorned, and in LeProtto’s hands (and feet), you see the magic of Broadway’s Golden Age leading men.

That underlying thread of legacy is what makes Gotta Dance! a satisfying project. Reinvention and evolution is wonderful. But to speak in classic Broadway vernacular, so is Tradition!