|
|
|
Last Updated: Oct 21st, 2007 - 09:55:08 |
For its 2006 City Center season in New York, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater favored its audience with a variety of Ailey classics. On Dec. 5, the mélange of works included perennial favorites Revelations and Cry. These signature pieces, usually danced by company veterans--Donna Wood, Marilyn Banks, Sarita Allen, Dudley Williams and Judith Jamison immediately come to mind--were danced by members who have only been associated with the Ailey Company a few years. Their youthful exuberance and technical brilliance was refreshing; however, the nuance and tactile understanding needed for some of the signature pieces was sometimes missing.
These gaps were most evident in the first piece of the evening, Night Creature. This ballet, evocative of late night Harlem speakeasies and clandestine rendezvous, demands that the dancer understands what it means to be a seductive, wild, midnight strolleruninhibited and free from all convention. Of the Ailey women, only tall, willowy Alicia J. Graf understood how to undulate suggestively in the flapper style of the period to the Duke Ellington score. Willy Laury stood out among the Ailey men. Maybe the company should examine old tapes of Sarita Allen in this piece and see how her body moved with the right amount of allure and sass, evoking the jazzy Harlem of yesteryear.
Cry, Ailey’s devotional and celebratory solo masterpiece in honor of Black women, was ably performed by Dwana Smallwood, who made this piece her ownan accomplishment in itself when preceded by such great interpreters as Jamison and Wood. Smallwood’s interpretation is a studied oneclear, bare bonedwithout extra flourishes. From the steady developpè of her well-muscled leg, to her clinched fists while portraying a pained matriarch, Smallwood is totally invested in this archetype of Black womanhood. She takes the audience on a journey from aching despair to unrestrained jubilation. Using a white, shawl-like material, she humbly scrubs floors; at other times she wraps the material around her head, turban-like, and walks majestically. Ailey expertly uses these movements as metaphors for the struggles and triumphs of Black women. And as always, joy comes in the dawning of self-actualization evident in spirit-filled struts and high freedom kicks.
Ailey’s The River, with music also by Ellington, was originally choreographed in 1970 for the American Ballet Theater. Although the Ailey Company has performed this piece for a number of years, the choreography is still approached tentatively. Originally, this piece was danced en pointe, not in ballet flats as now danced by the Ailey Company, which gives the ballet a slow, pedestrian look.
Veteran dancers Clifton Brown, Linda Celeste Sims and Amos Machanic, Jr. capture Ailey’s terpsichorean allusions to the meanderings of water. Brown’s leaps in the “Spring” section of The River caress the air with a quality that many dancers lack these days, ballonthe ability to stay suspended in the air. Like a bubbling, gurgling spring, Brown possesses movements that gush and erupt joyfully.
Linda Celeste Sims, partnered by Amos Machanic, Jr. in the “Lake” section, dances a pas de deux that is serene and mesmerizing. Every balance and extension is musically sustained and controlled. This section is perhaps the most beautiful section of The River. Various couples of same and different genders couple and encircle Sims and Machanic, demonstrating that love has many expressions and configurations, not unlike the different manifestations of water.
Revelations presents the biggest challenge for the company in that it is a theater piece closely associated with former Ailey dancers. Ailey drew upon blood memories and the spirit-filled church experiences of his youth for the creation of Revelations. Perhaps the younger members of the company are too far removed from this African American tradition to invest the authenticity needed. Asha Thomas, however, does exhibit an understanding of what it means to be possessed by the spirit. In the “Wade in the Water” section, Thomas’s ecstatic body contractions demonstrate that she is in touch with the ancestors and what moved them to shout and pray.
The masterpieces Night Creature, Cry, and Revelations show the depth and range of Ailey’s choreography. Just as each one of these masterpieces represents a different stage in Ailey’s choreographic development, so has the Ailey company evolved from a storehouse of mostly Ailey’s work to a company that performs a rich, diverse repertoire. Ailey’s work stands on its own merit, and with Jamison at the helm, his legacy will continue.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
