Ailey, keep on dancing
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
City Center
Through January 3, 2010
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Judith Jamison is celebrating her twentieth year as artistic director. She continues to carry the company’s style and mission, while breathing new life into it. Sunday December 20, 2009 Ailey gave a winning program of tributes.
Revelations always holds some new discovery, like Kirven J. Boyd performing the delightful, theatrical, final exit in "Wade in the Water." The dancers are like old friends as year after year, in popular City Center seasons since 1971, Ailey regenerates. It is dance “delivered to the people,” in the late founder Alvin Ailey’s famous words.
Jamison’s brand new Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places) celebrates the age of Obama with a scene called “Precedent (President.)” Anthony Burrell dances in suit and tie, and like our president, he does not put on airs. Instead, Josh Johnson stands out dancing with Burrell. An effervescent duet for Brianna Reed and Johnson called “Brights” uplifts, to joyous music in ELEW's fitting 'rockjazz' score. In the requisite energetic club dance led by Megan Jakel, “Uptown Down,” several warm the floor, including 29-year company member Renee Robinson. A dramatic double duet pairs young Constance Stamatou with long-time Ailey dancer Guillermo Asca, to advantage. They converse with movement, saying more than words can. Antonio Douthit is the Jin (Genie) recalling a larger-than-life bluebird with a tall blue feather. In Al Crawford’s mesmerizing lighting, a constant ethereal light bathes Douthit from tip to toe in a baby blue glow.
The pictures-at-an-exhibition set has projected images of Jamison’s original drawings. They are bold, colorful, and redundantly human. One of the earthy, primitive “canvases,” three heads, holds the spotlight in a wonderful comedic trio. Generally, the images compete with the dancing, unsuccessfully.
Said Ailey in Hymn, “If you can’t do any better than you did yesterday, why continue?” However, Jamison brought her 1993 Hymn up to date. The new production may be the best of any in its narrative niche— the most successful combination of storytelling and dance I have seen.
The incredible actor Anna Deveare Smith cuts in on Ailey’s recorded words. At a stage-right podium, she speaks the majority of the text in this fascinating epic, while dancers solo center stage. It works best when the dancer has as much acting ability as Hope Boykin in a scene called "The Search for Perfection." In the final "Epilogue," the company splits into three stunning formations that rival the final lightening leap. It could come a nanosecond sooner, to Robert Ruggieri’s final electronic note.
Hymn, sandwiched between intermissions, is the evening's most memorable dance, with its famous Ailey pyrotechnic leaps, company numbers, AND the unusual, incredible collaboration with beloved actor-playwright-author Smith.
Above: Renee Robinson in Hymn. Photo by Andrew Eccles
Tuesday December 22, more tributes
Kudos to Jamison for inspiring, and commissioning, Ron Brown’s Dancing Spirit. Brown’s interesting musical selection includes songs by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, and Radiohead. The final movement of his traditionally structured work is allegro, to Flying Chase by War. After a somewhat rambling second movement to the wah-wah of Marsalis’s horn, Clifton Taylor’s lights brighten, illuminating pure jouissance.
Renee Robinson, Linda Celeste Sims, and Matthew Rushing star in this dance for nine. It begins with counterpointed, diagonal, stooped walks in the African manner. False starts, that is, changes in direction, provide welcome mystery. Feet are flat, torsos undulate, and boneless-looking arms wave in patterns. A wonderful trio of men invites waiting women in the wings for solo turns, to Radiohead. Finally, to War’s fast Latin beats, a club scene. Many changes in tempo and direction help make a sophisticated storyline of movement. There is almost always something happening worth waiting for. A quietly spectacular dénouement on the cyclorama does justice to this winning choreography.
Among Us returns on the Tuesday program, with Clifton Brown as the Jin. He twists his body and quivers his feather to look more ethereal. Then Rushing’s first solo choreography for the company, Uptown, tells an abridged story of the Harlem Renaissance. Dancers thrillingly portray the social dance styles of the day in a “rent party,” jitterbugging a la Frankie Manning, and at the Savoy. Lively characterizations include Josh Johnson as a persona non grata, and a wonderful Abdur-Rahim Jackson does MC honors as Victor, inventor of the Victrola. In fact, Uptown could be more comprehensive by just telling The Renaissance through social dancing. Several scenes about other arts and intellectual pursuits of the day look non sequitur.
