Winter's treasures: New York's Ailey troupe at City Center

Khalia Campbell
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
(photo: Andrew Eccles)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
December 4-January 5

Each December, with the last leaves falling and the first hint of winter, we come to expect our beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to spread warmth at City Center with its numerous and varied productions. This year, I've kept things simple and opted for a single indulgence from the Ailey abundance--one evening including a world premiere by Donald Byrd, company premieres by Camille A. Brown and Aszure Barton, and a new production of Lar Lubovitch's 1990 duet, Fandango, first presented by Ailey in 1995.

That duet, set to Maurice Ravel's Bólero, depends on a nearly endless stream of partnering exploits and maneuvers that lock its lovers together like shapeshifting puzzle pieces. Knowing Bólero as well as most of us do, it's hard to not wonder, as you see and tick off the various grapplings, how the dancers will work with the next cycle of Ravel's intensifying music. But Danica Paulos and Clifton Brown, the pair I saw last evening, brought exactitude and crisp dynamism--in the case of Paulos, flashes of authentic human joy--to even the most toy-like moves. Here, you really can tell the dancer from the dance, and that makes a difference.

Byrd's Greenwood takes a Rashomon-style approach to the mystery behind an incident that touched off the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in which white Oklahomans rioted, unleashing widespread death and destruction in a prosperous Black district known as the "Black Wall Street." What actually happened, or did not happen, when a Black, 19-year old man encountered a 17-year-old white female elevator operator in her elevator? Byrd displays different scenarios--one, perfectly neutral; one, romantically sensual; one, crude and violent--within a mist-filled, dream-like atmosphere wonderfully lit by Jack Mehler, haunted by figures out of the Tulsa past who enter and slip away from the scenes as if drifting through a narrow space between slightly-parted elevator doors. In this stagecraft, dancers resemble pieces on a board game--mostly static, set in place for family photo portraits or rigidly deployed here or there as if by forces beyond their control. The piece works as a visual expression of a story idea, one with continued relevance in today's climate that tolerates and even encourages open expression of racism. (Audience members have been issued a booklet with a brief history of the Greenwood land and aircraft attack--a shameful history largely absent from US history books--and a helpful suggestion of questions Byrd's dance might raise.) However, Greenwood, in its movement and its storytelling approach, looks much closer to dances within the traditional Ailey comfort zone than anything else on this evening's program.

Aside from the Lubovitch duet, if you relish seeing this company step to and possibly master a challenge--and always I do--you need works like Brown's City of Rain (2010) and Barton's Busk (2009). Both are big ensemble pieces by dancemakers influenced by contemporary culture and confident in their ability to activate and wrangle a roomy stage. That both choreographers are women--and ones with accelerating renown on the world stage--is a gold star for Ailey.

The visual atmosphere of Brown's piece, a memorial to a friend who died from a paralyzing disease, hangs bleak and heavy, but you notice that the weight of this clouded sky holds no power over her dancers. Bodies cave in and are wrenched in every direction, but they are also liquid fire from within seeking every outlet for life and expression. Barton, too, evokes the indomitable human spirit in Busk, opening with a single, hooded, white-gloved street performer whose talents blend the disciplines of dance, mime, clowning and acrobatics then expanding to a chorus of the same whose driven, tribal togetherness ranges in mood from devotional to nearly combative.

The Ailey audience on Friday night looked to be same as it ever was-- typical in its racial, class and age demographics. And yet these fans greeted the contemporary works of Brown and Barton with roars of love and loyalty which did my heart good. Yes, the company moves on, and yes, it still is Ailey, now and forever.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues at City Center through January 4. For scheduling information and tickets, click here.

New York City Center
131 West 55th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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