PastForward, Playhouse, Edinburgh

You can't keep an old dancer down

In a new version of Trisha Brown's 36-year-old dance, Homemade, Mikhail Baryshnikov acts out a set of movements inspired by his own most personal memories, while on his back a heavy 8mm camera projects a film of an earlier performance onto the wall behind him. As the dancer and his image move in and out of phase, the flickering, faded Mischa-on-the-wall seems to alternate between the roles of tyrant, ghost, guardian angel, puppet-master and lost ideal. It is a poignant metaphor for the past and our relationship to it, and as such could be the signature piece for PASTForward, the current show by Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project.

PASTForward is a collection of old and new works by members of the Judson Dance Theatre, a group of choreographers, artists and performers who came together in the early Sixties and created what would become known as postmodern dance. The Judson group rejected a set of assumptions about dance that had until then seemed pretty automatic – that it should be performed to music; that it needed some level of training or technical skill; that it had to be entertaining. Accounts of the Judson years tend to concentrate on the technical innovations, but it was the death squeal of this last sacred cow that caused – and causes – most distress.

In a prerecorded video prologue, narrated by Baryshnikov, and in the video snippets that introduce most of the dances, there are repeated references to "boredom" and "tedium". Judson co-founder Steve Paxton recalls that the early works were booed, even by an "avant-garde audience". All these video clips are fascinating and full of insight, but still come across as a disingenuous attempt to pre-empt criticism, and orchestrate an air of hair-shirted, self-conscious reverence in the crowd.

Certainly, this is the only attitude that can possibly sustain you through Paxton's self-styled "pedestrian" choreography. In Satisfyin Lover (1967), people of all shapes, sizes and ages, drawn from the local community, walk from right to left across the stage, at different speeds, pausing occasionally. In Flat (1964), Baryshnikov paces out ellipses of varying length and eccentricity, and removes items of clothing which he hangs from hooks attached to his body. These are a valuable reminder that revolutions are often more fun to take part in than they are to observe.

There is plenty, though, that delights. Yvonne Rainer's Trio A, refashioned constantly since 1966, is a sophisticate's dream of apparent innocence and spontaneity; and the evening catapults to a close with Lucinda Childs' harpsichord-driven Concerto (from 1993). The dancers of White Oak are superb (itself a betrayal of the Judson spirit, surely?), but hardly resemble the "glue factory" that Baryshnikov once called his company. With a few exceptions, such as the 53-year-old Baryshnikov himself, they seem positively nubile. Perhaps this is just Baryshnikov surrendering to the temptation of age to surround itself with youth. Or perhaps it is a reflection that Judson itself was a playground as much as anything, full of young people having a laugh, finding out new things and maybe, just occasionally, taking the piss.