Tag: Jamar Roberts

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More Revivals at Alvin Ailey – THE PRODIGAL PRINCE is Electrifying!

 

Last night was, sadly, my last Alvin Ailey performance of the season. They performed two revivals – Geoffrey Holder’s The Prodigal Prince from 1968 (which was astounding), and Judith Jamison’s Forgotten Time, from 1989. They also performed Christopher Huggins’ new Anointed, which I saw earlier in the season and wrote about here.  (Photo above, by Paul Kolnik, is of Samuel Lee Roberts in Prodigal Prince).

I liked Jamison’s Forgotten Time. As you can see in the photos below, she created some very beautiful images with the partnering. Photos below are by Paul Kolnik. In the first and last, the dancers are Jamar Roberts and Antonio Douthit; in the middle two, they are Linda Celeste Sims and Clifton Brown.

 

 

 

 

It was very spiritual and I loved the ending image, with the ensemble of dancers – about 13 in total – all looking up and waving their arms back and forth. At many points the dancers would look up toward the sky, into the light, as if searching for something, some spiritual being. At points the men would lift the women on their shoulders so they could gaze even higher. And there was as stunning solo between the two main men in the middle. Last night that solo was performed by Glenn Allen Sims and Jermaine Terry, who were very good. The audience gave them huge applause at the end.

The music was hauntingly beautiful. It was by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, and sounded like Bulgarian spirituals. I also loved the costumes (by Jamison and Ellen Mahlke).

I really loved The Prodigal Prince, as did the whole audience. I didn’t know when we were going to get out of there after the performance was over, the dancers received so many curtain calls. By Geoffrey Holder (who’s won Tony awards for The Wiz and Timbuktu), from 1968, the company revived it this season. I think they should do it every season though. It’s a good dance to end the evening with, so they could alternate more often between it and Revelations.

The subject of The Prodigal Prince is Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite (see some of his images here). According to the program notes, Hyppolite was also a houngan – a high priest of Voudoun, the religion of the Haitians. In 1943 St. John the Baptist and the Voudoun Goddess Erzulie came to him in a vision which inspired him to take a sojourn to Africa (which he may have imagined) and paint the Voudoun loas – or African gods. His paintings became celebrated after leading surrealist Andre Breton discovered them and brought them to Europe.

Most of the choreography consists of Haitian and African dance; I’d never seen Haitian before and I found it spellbinding. It’s amazing all that the Ailey dancers can do, and do superbly. The music, also by Holder, was very drum-heavy, very rhythmic, very African – the type of music that makes you want to take up African dance. Samuel Lee Roberts’ depiction of Hyppolite, as he encountered Erzulie (danced by Akua Noni Parker) and Saint John the Baptist (in African form, danced by Jamar Roberts), then dreamed of Africa and was taken with the African spirit (danced by Michael Francis McBride), was excellent. Samuel Lee Roberts is so good at roles that require the dancer to act as well as dance. Earlier in the season, he danced the role of Lazarus in Mary Lou’s Mass and he was the highlight of that entire dance. He’s very entertaining and can bring out the humor in a story without reducing its depth.

The whole dance was so mesmerizing, the costumes brilliant, and the beat of that music so infectious. Definitely one of the highlights of the season. Here are more pictures, all by Paul Kolnik.

 

 

 

(Lee with Briana Reed as Erzulie.)

 

All photos from AlvinAiley.org.

The company still has about two weeks left of their City Center season. Go here for the schedule.

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More Highlights From Alvin Ailey Season

Some more highlights of Alvin Ailey season, which goes until January 2nd:

First, from now through December 19th the company is joined onstage by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Live music always makes the evening so much richer. I was there last night, when they played music by Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie from Ailey’s Three Black Kings and Billy Wilson’s The Winter in Lisbon. Try to go if you can to one of these live-music performances. See the City Center schedule here.

Also, on January 2nd, the company will close the season, and Judith Jamison’s tenure as artistic director, with special performances by surprise guest artists and special dances including David Parsons’s popular Caught (performed by an Ailey dancer). And, on New Year’s Eve, Sweet Honey in the Rock will perform live with the company.

Okay highlights (mainly in photos):

Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit. This is a beautiful dance that premiered last season and grew on me even more this year. It’s set to music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead, and War and combines American modern dance with movement from Cuba and Brazil. It depicts a community of people whose dancing suggests that they’re each doing their own thing, each embodying their own spirit through dance, but also coming together for ritual. The dance takes place at night, as the background depicts first a starry night, and ends with a fully-visible moon. I love its energy, and how it builds. It’s simply mesmerizing. (Above photos by Paul Kolnik, and Christopher Duggan, respectively.)

Jamar Roberts dancing Robert Battle’s brief but compelling solo, In/Side. Wow. Audience went wild with applause. I think the company should consider showing this on So You Think You Can Dance – it’s akin to many of the contemporary pieces danced on that show. (Samuel Lee Roberts is pictured above, though, not Jamar. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Alvin Ailey’s Night Creature. This is not a new production, but it grows on me every year. I love the structure – how there’s a jazzy section, followed by a balletic one, then returning to jazz. I love the little story in the middle with the main woman – the jazz diva – getting a little carried away with herself.

But for me personally, I love how much the movement resembles samba. So many of the steps are the same exact steps I learned in ballroom, but of course they’re danced much differently. Here they’re much slower, slinkier, jazzier, with the upper body much looser. It always makes me wonder about the origins of American jazz dance. Samba is a merging of African and Latin dance – it’s Brazilian. So jazz dance must have origins in African and Latin. Yet, it’s also balletic. I always thought there was something balletic about samba too and if that were emphasized it would be all the more beautiful. My ballroom teachers always rolled their eyes at me when I said that. But I feel like Mr. Ailey had the same idea, because this is that dance! You can see the samba-like movement in some of his other dances too, like at the beginning of the “Honor Processional” in Revelations. (Photo by Nan Melville.)

Memoria by Alvin Ailey. This is not a new production but for some reason I don’t remember seeing it before. It’s a tribute to one of his friends who died, a choreographer named Joyce Trisler. I love how the first part of it is like a memorial service – slow, somber, and spiritual. Then in the second half, the momentum builds into a rhythmic celebration of her life. The night I saw it, Briana Reed (who’s not pictured above) danced the lead very powerfully. (Photo by Andrew Eccles.)

Camille A. Brown’s three-part solo, The Evolution of a Secured Feminine. It’s a short, clever piece, by turns funny and sad, filled with lots of spastic-looking movement that doesn’t always seem to accompany the lyrics. But that is part of its humor and wit. I like the third section the best because it tells a little story. (Briana Reed is in Paul Kolnik’s photo above).

Uptown, by Matthew Rushing. This piece is just as much theater as dance and it takes you on a little tour of the Harlem Renaissance. You visit the Cotton Club and the Savoy, and Zora Neale Hurston, WEB DuBois, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, and Florence Mills all make appearances. But it was Clifton Brown’s portrayal of the central character in a Langston Hughes poem that really touched me. He’s really good at those kinds of solos, Clifton. He’s really good at finding and expressing the deepest interior of a character, and really dramatizing it. I can’t find any photos of him in this, but above is a photo by Paul Kolnik of Amos J. Machanic as Victor, the hilariously wacky tour guide, along with the cast. This year, I saw that character danced by Abdur-Rahim Jackson, who had a lot of fun with it, really brought it to life.

Okay, I have to stop now, but more to come, especially on the new pieces!

All photos from the Alvin Ailey website.

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Alvin Ailey: New Dances and New Productions

Alvin Ailey season is upon us! I attended two performances over the weekend and, of course, they made my weekend. I’m always so happy when I come out of an Alvin Ailey performance. Particularly with their new, 50-dancer Revelations, which I think is only for this year because it marks the dance’s 50th year anniversary. I’ve always thought of this dance as the quintessential American dance, and it’s so stunning seeing the stage completely filled with dancers. For some of the solo sections like “I Wanna Be Ready,” they triple up the number of dancers, and they often use students from the Alvin Ailey School and from the Ailey II company for the larger sections like “Pilgrim of Sorrow” and the “Honor Processional” from “Take Me To the Water.” So, please, if you’re in New York, try to see one of the 50-dancer versions. They’re only showing that production of Revelations on certain dates, so make sure you check the City Center schedule. I hope they consider doing this a few times a season in the future, though, because (expensive as it probably is) it’s really so brilliant.

Also, my new second favorite dance is now Cry. I’ve seen it twice this season, and don’t really know now if I’ve ever seen the whole thing. Maybe I’ve only seen Judith Jamison dance it on video and I’ve seen the individual sections before onstage, never in whole. It was created by Mr. Ailey in 1970 but this is a new production. This year they have three different dancers dancing the three solos. The first solo is set to Alice Coltrane’s “Something About John Coltrane,” and was danced the nights I saw it by Linda Celeste Sims on the first night, and Rachel McLaren on the second. They were equally spellbinding. This section, to me, is very powerful, the movement is very modern, with lots of sharp staccato movements meant to convey strife and longing and fear and a whole host of emotions – along with clever, ironic uses of a towel-like sheet – and it requires very powerful dancers.

The second section, the adagio set to Laura Nyro’s “Been on a Train,” which often nearly brings me to tears, was danced both nights by Constance Stamatiou, who is really growing on me this season. She’s a really beautiful, very “womanly” dancer, and she is really growing to have a great stage presence.

The third section, the more rhythmic African section, set to the Voices of East Harlem’s “Right On, Be Free,” was danced both nights by Briana Reed, who’s always been one of my favorite dancers in the company. She was out of most last season and I’m so glad she’s back. Mr. Ailey dedicated this dance to “all Black women everywhere – especially our mothers.” I love how it begins with a powerful evocation of oppression and ends with a celebration of African roots. I hope they perform it every season.

The two new dances I’ve seen so far (there are many to come in the next few weeks), are Christopher Huggins’s Anoited (which is a world premiere this season), and incoming artistic director Robert Battle’s The Hunt (which is new for Alvin Ailey this season).

The Hunt is great fun! I loved it. I could see that one every night, just like Revelations. All six dancers are men and it depicts, as the name implies, the rituals involved in preparation for a hunt. It conveys how physically and mentally grueling the hunt will be as a test the men’s limits, and it also showcases the athletic power of Ailey’s male dancers. And the music is mad fun! It’s Les Tamours du Bronx, wildly percussive, so much fun! I joked on Twitter that I needed to get it for a workout tape. Seriously!

It’s certainly a male moment in dance! This dance received loads of applause and a full-audience standing ovation. In Revelations, which followed, “Sinner Man” then received huge whoops and hollers from the crowd. As they should have. But the women of Cry deserved a full-audience standing ovation too! Not fair!

Christopher Huggins’s Anoited is really beautiful. Huggins is a former member of Ailey and this dance is a tribute to the leaders of the company, both past and present. The first section is a really lovely duet by Jamar Roberts and Linda Celeste Sims, with the two meant to depict Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison.

Over the music we hear Jamison’s words to Ailey, when he told her he was sick and asked her whether she would take over the company. “And I said, ‘Of course!'” she repeats many times. At the end of the duet, he lies down, and she sadly kneels over his body. These two dancers are perfect to represent Ailey and Jamison. If this company does have a “star” right now it’s Linda Celeste Sims, and Jamar Roberts, with his physicality and stage presence is larger than life.

In the second section, set to more percussive music by Sean Clements, Jamison is joined by four other women known for keeping Ailey’s legacy alive over time: Sylvia Waters (director of Ailey II), Denise Jefferson (director of the Ailey School, who recently passed away), Nasha Thomas Schmitt (director of Ailey’s arts in education program), and Ana Maria Forsythe (director of the Ailey / Fordham BFA program). The women are all dressed in celebratory purple and they dance a rhythmic, high-charged African / modern combo.

In the third and final section, entitled “52 and Counting,” the dancers all come together and are joined by others, all dressed in red. They dance to a fast-paced beat, sometimes in ensemble, and breaking into duets replete with thrilling lifts. It reminded me a bit of the second section of Love Stories, or of Tharp’s The Golden Section and it stood for me as a celebration of some of the more contemporary pieces the company is known for. Amidst all this, the figures of Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison return, and perform another beautiful lift-heavy duet, this time with Roberts dressed in white.

I’ll write more as the season continues. As I said there are many more premieres to come (check out City Center’s website for the schedule). For now, I’m off to a Nutcracker by the Royal Ballet. I love the diversity of dance 🙂

All photos from AlvinAiley.org. Top photo by Christopher Duggan; all other photos by Paul Kolnik.

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ALVIN AILEY DANCERS TO PERFORM ON SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE THIS THURSDAY

I’ve just received word that Alvin Ailey dancers Jamar Roberts and Rachael McLaren (photos above by Andrew Eccles) will be appearing on this Thursday’s results show of So You Think You Can Dance. They’ll be performing an excerpt from Ulysses Dove’s Bad Blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that dance but have always found Dove’s work very captivating. Plus, Jamar’s one of my favorites. Exciting!

Also, for New York audiences, Alvin Ailey will be performing in Central Park’s free SummerStage series on July 23rd and 24th, both nights at 8pm. By the way, this year marks the 25th anniversary of SummerStage.

Also for NYers, the Ailey Extension is offering a buy five get one free deal on classes through the end of July in celebration of the school’s 5th anniversary. Go here for more info.

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DANCERS RESPONDING TO AIDS BENEFIT PICS

 

Here are some photos of the Dancers Responding to AIDS benefit performances, held at Cedar Lake studios on January 11th and 12th. I was unable to go, but heard Danny Tidwell ended up not dancing. But Jamar Roberts (above) of Alvin Ailey, and our Marcelo Gomes of ABT did, and both were reportedly charmingly wonderfully superb — as always!

 

Marcelo on left, Sarita Allen in middle, and Rubinald Pronk (in excellent jacket) on right.

Go here for the rest of the photos.