Tag: Judith Jamison

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Judith Jamison Rings Closing Bell at NYSE

Yesterday I attended Judith Jamison’s ringing of the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. It was the first time I’d ever actually been inside NYSE and it was a really cool experience. So glad Alvin Ailey invited us to attend!

It wasn’t really a huge ceremony. There were no spoken introductions, though there was a line of ticker tape that read that Judith Jamison of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater would ring the closing bell in celebration of the 5oth anniversary of Mr. Ailey’s Revelations. So, if you were in Times Square watching the screens or watching on TV or on the NYSE website, you probably saw that. But inside the NYSE, she was simply escorted in by several NYSE press people, led up to the podium, and at 4:00 p.m., when the stock exchange closes for the day, she led a round of applause for the traders, who joined her in applause, and then she rang the bell, which lasted for several seconds. Afterward, Robert Battle (incoming artistic director), who accompanied her up to the podium, lifted a little gavel and softly struck in on the podium a couple times. Also with Jamison and Battle were Masazumi Chaya (associate artistic director of AAADT) and Sylvia Waters (artistic director of Ailey II.) The ceremony was over pretty quickly.

They let me take some pictures though:

From right: Chaya, Waters, Jamison, Battle, and the NYSE guy. This is right before the bell.

They posed for the press cameramen, who asked Waters to change places with Battle.

This is before the ringing of the bell. The NYSE people let me take some general pictures of the inside.

And these are from outside, around the corner, around Wall Street.

We had a snowstorm the day before and for some reason New York was pretty shut down by it. At NYSE I learned that only about half of the traders were in that day. And, my bank was closed, my post office was closed, most of the coffee shops in the area that I used to frequent when I worked down there, were closed, the New York Public Library was closed. The subway stations were dangerous to get into as the steps hadn’t been de-iced. My own sidewalk wasn’t de-iced and it was hard to get from my building to the subway. I was nearly snowed into my building, as we have a few steps leading down to our entrance and those weren’t de-iced until later in the day. My street wasn’t cleaned and cars not realizing that would drive down and get stuck right in the middle of the street. For two days I kept hearing cars screeching and screeching to free their tires from the clumps of snow. It was bizarre. I mean, yeah, it snowed, but I’ve lived in New York for 17 years now and we’ve had far more severe snowstorms than this. And I’ve never seen the city have such a problem handling it. Maybe it’s just that we haven’t had a snowstorm in a while.

Anyway, things are better today – now the snow is melting in to a sludgy mess, but at least it’s just dirty water and not ice.

Even trudging through the snow, though, I’m so glad I went down there. Thank you again to Alvin Ailey for inviting bloggers to apply for press passes and to NYSE for allowing us in.

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Judith Jamison to Ring NYSE Closing Bell on December 27th

Apparently it’s dance season at the New York Stock Exchange! Tomorrow morning, a NYCity Ballet Sugar Plum fairy will ring the opening bell (word in the Twittersphere is that that Sugar Plum will be Ashley Bouder). And now it’s just been announced that Judith Jamison will ring the closing bell on Monday, December 27th. This will be in honor of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s final week at City Center and Jamison’s final year as Artistic Director, and in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Ailey’s Revelations. Jamison will be joined by incoming Artistic Director Robert Battle (photo above of the two of them by Andrew Eccles), AAADT dancers, and several other company members. The closing bell ringing will take place at 4:00 p.m. on the 27th and can be viewed live on the NYSE’s website: nyse.com.

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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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Paperback Dolls and Nutrackers

I have a guest post up today at the Paperback Dolls blog! They’re currently featuring New York authors and bloggers as part of their “Passport to New York” series. So, since I’m both, I talked about both my novel and the blog.

Regarding the blog, I gave their readers some recommendations on what to see in New York for the next couple of months dance-wise. I then realized I haven’t done that for my own readers yet, because I’ve been so blasted busy. But of course everyone who regularly reads my blog knows what I’ll recommend: Alvin Ailey, upcoming at City Center for the month of December (it’s Judith Jamison’s last season as artistic director so there will be lots of tributes to her); New York City Ballet’s Balanchinian Nutcracker which has already begun and continues on through the beginning of the year; and ABT’s new Nutcracker, which begins December 22nd and will be at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I didn’t have a chance to write about it but I saw a small sneak preview of ABT’s new Nut at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process event a couple weeks ago, at which choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and conductor Ormsby Wilkins spoke. Several excerpts were performed including Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes dancing part of the final Clara and the Prince pas de deux, the Russian dance, and some of the snow scenes. Ratmansky and ABT representatives had said earlier during a press conference that it would be pretty much traditional, but from what I saw it looks very modern. The costumes and sets – which are gorgeous and are made by Richard Hudson, the Tony award-winning set designer of the Lion King – are period, but the movement looked very modern to me, not at all classical. The pas de deux looked like lyrical and more romantic (without a capital “r”) and less fairy tale-like than I’ve normally seen, and the Russian dance looked folksy and even a bit slapsticky rather than the classical bravura dancing we’re used to with “Trepak.” Anyway, Ratmansky had noted that the original choreography for this ballet is no longer extant so that’s why there are so many different versions. The only two versions I’m really that familiar with, I guess, are Balanchine’s and the San Francisco Ballet’s two-year-old version, the DVD of which I reviewed a while back.

Anyway, I think the new Ratmansky Nutcracker is going to be a departure from the ordinary, and it will be interesting to see the whole and see how audiences react!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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Wendy Perron, Esteemed Editor-in-Chief of Dance Magazine, Recommends Swallow on Twitter!

How awesome is this!: “Tonya Plank’s SWALLOW is a real page turner, & she shows that lawyers get as intensely nervous as dancers.” From Wendy Perron, E-I-C of Dance Magazine, via Twitter. I’m so giddy 🙂 I’d run into Ms. Perron at an Alvin Ailey season preview Tuesday night and when she told me she was reading my book and enjoying learning about my other life, I almost fell off my chair! I can’t even express how honored I am that she even decided to pick the book up!

The Alvin Ailey season preview was excellent, by the way. Their NY City Center season doesn’t begin until December but I think it’s going to be really fantastic. We got to see a sneak preview of The Hunt, by Robert Battle (incoming Artistic Director), which is an African dance depicting how men prepare for an actual hunt but that also serves as a metaphor for how dancers train and prepare to execute a difficult dance. I can’t wait to see that one in full, as well as The Prodigal Prince, by Geoffrey Holder. That one originally premiered in 1968 and Holder was there to talk a bit about it. Really sweetly funny man! It’s about the Haitian artist, Hector Hyppolite, known as “the Haitian Picasso,” and it’s a narrative filled with lots of beautiful African dance. We also saw Camille A. Brown’s Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which I remember from a Fall For Dance program a couple of years ago. It’s a one-woman solo that I liked very much and will, for the first time this season, be performed by someone other than Brown herself.

I enjoyed seeing all my favorite Ailey dancers again – and on a small stage this time (it took place in the Citicorp theater in the basement of their studios instead of City Center), and I was particularly happy to see Briana Reed again. She is one of my favorite women in the company – strong and very dramatic and an intense mover – and I missed seeing her last season. I think she was out with an injury for most of it.

Also, Judith Jamison revealed that Ailey will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Revelations this season, which means the cast for some performances will be increased to 50 dancers! They’re also making a film about that dance, which will be shown at all of the performances, and there will be a lot of live music, some of which Jamison will herself be conducting. Sweet Honey and the Rock will also perform live. And, there will be nice tributes to Denise Jefferson, Joan Weill, and to Jamison, who will be serving her last season as Artistic Director.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking of moving out of New York for a while, but I’m now thinking I’m going to wait on that for at least a few months. There are too many exciting things happening this fall – from Ailey’s season, to New York City Ballet’s first ever fall season, to ABT’s first Nutcracker, to of course the regulars like Fall for Dance and the Guggenheim Works & Process series. I think I need to wait a bit. Plus, I’ve made so many wonderful friends here, and I’m so involved in the dance scene, and every time I think of leaving NYC it really saddens me. But of course with the internet, friendships can easily survive physical distance these days. And I’m sure there are dance scenes everywhere, maybe just not of the same intensity. Who knows, maybe I just need a top-floor apartment somewhere else in the city… Upstairs Godzilla has moved out but her furniture-throwing legacy — an extremely creaky ceiling that sounds like it’s going to fall every time the new upstairs neighbor so much as shifts his weight (and which the landlord won’t fix) — remains…

Oh, one more thing (I know this post is very rambling): Ms. Perron mentioned to me that she saw a preview of Mao’s Last Dancer, which she thought was very good, and that it opens this weekend. So, I know one thing I’ll be doing this weekend. So excited for good ballet movies!

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Ailey Camp!

A couple of weeks ago, the kind people at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater invited me to visit one of their Ailey camps. The one nearest me was in Washington Heights, so I spent a morning up there watching the kids and their classes. Then, late last week, they invited me to that camp’s final performance, which took place at Columbia University’s Miller Theater.

What a sweet night! So precious – the kids were so proud, the parents were so proud, the teachers were so proud. And the kids danced very very well. Some of them could seriously have professional dance careers if they wanted.

But that’s not really the point of the Ailey camps. They’re not pre-professional schools, like the Ailey school; they’re for underprivileged, inner-city kids from ages 11-14 to have a wonderful summer experience learning to dance – or, rather, learning discipline and and self-respect and acquiring an appreciation for the arts through self-expression. The camps are focused on dance, of course, but the children also take classes in other forms of self-expression, such as writing – where they compose poems about their lives, drumming (could anything be more fun than beating rhythmically on a conga drum?!) , and personal improvement kind of classes where they learn about the effects of drugs and alcohol, nutrition, etc., but in a fun way, by grouping into teams and having a kind of group Jeopardy tournament. The dance classes encompass many forms — ballet, tap, Horton-based modern, jazz, and African. And they go from class to class each day, each class lasting about 45 minutes. So, it’s like a school, but a really fun school! The camps receive corporate funding and grants, so the kids pay nothing to go; they don’t even pay for leotards and tights, etc.

The performance was really lovely. The various groups danced ballet, modern, tap, jazz, lots of African (that seemed to be the most fun, both for the kids and the spectators), read poems, and there was a drum section. There was a beautiful lyrical modern dance by an ensemble of girls that ended up being a wonderful tribute to Denise Jefferson, who passed away a few weeks ago. And they had a big tribute to Judith Jamison (Alvin Ailey’s muse and central dancer, who has run the company for the past two decades and who will retire at the end of this season). That tribute involved a life-sized puppet that the kids constructed, which they managed to make dance, which was really spectacular, and elicited loads of applause.

As I said, a really special night.

Here are a couple of videos I found on YouTube. The first is of the Miami camp (there are, I think, 13 altogether, in cities around the U.S.), and explains what the camp is all about, and the second is scenes from past NY camps.

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ALVIN AILEY'S DENISE JEFFERSON HAS PASSED AWAY

I received word yesterday that Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Denise Jefferson passed away over the weekend. She was one of the three women (along with Judith Jamison and Sylvia Waters) to whom Mr. Ailey had entrusted the future care of his dance company at the time he passed away. She was currently heading the Alvin Ailey School. She died of ovarian cancer. She was 66. How sad.

Click on the link below to read AAADT’s press release.

(Above photo by Andrew Eccles).

Continue reading “ALVIN AILEY'S DENISE JEFFERSON HAS PASSED AWAY”

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ALVIN AILEY BEGINS THEIR 20 CITY TOUR IN DC AND VP HOSTS A CELEBRATION IN THEIR HONOR

 

The luckiest dancers in the world, I swear, are those in Alvin Ailey. That company seems to tour more cities in more countries every year than any other performing arts troupe. It’s like, become a dancer and see the world! Anyway, they began their current U.S.-wide tour last night in Washington DC, where the Vice President and Dr. Biden hosted a celebration in their honor. Vice Pres Biden apparently admitted he was never a fan of ballet until he and his wife witnessed Mikhail Baryshnikov years ago. Read more at Sister to Sister Magazine.  And go here for AAADT’s tour schedule.

Photo of Judith Jamison’s Divining by Nan Melville.

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NEW YEAR’S EVE AT ALVIN AILEY

 

If you’re in NY and you don’t yet have plans for New Year’s Eve, I highly recommend Alvin Ailey. They’re doing their Best of 20 Years program — a celebration of Judith Jamison’s 20 years as Artistic Director with the company that includes excerpts from the various ballets she’s commissioned in that time — including Ronald K. Brown’s beatific Grace, Lar Lubovitch’s intriguing North Star, Donald K. Byrd’s tantalizing disco-y Dance at the Gym, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s thought-provoking Shelter — the list goes on! Excellent excellent program. And then, they end with Hans van Manen’s by turns beautifully lyrical and energetically fast-paced Solo (for three men), followed by of course Revelations. Seriously — is there a better dance to celebrate a new (and hopefully, please God, better) year? This is all to be followed by a grand grand finale.

For tix, go here.

Unfortunately, I can’t go, and my Ailey season has now ended. I’m so sad — I always feel a hole in my stomach every time this year. No one combines balletic modern with African, with American social and street, with jazz and theater… no company’s dancers are more versatile (now if they were all to compete on So You Think You Can Dance, that would be a showdown!) , and no company’s product so far-reaching. I really love them. If anyone goes to the New Year’s Eve celebration, please report back!

Photo by Kwame Brathwaite.

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

 

Hi you guys. Sorry I’ve been so bad about posting lately. This book –argh! Took me a ridiculously long time to figure out my Kindle conversion! If I wasn’t so computer dyslexic…. Anyway, Kindle version should be up soon on Amazon. Will post when it is.

I have a few blog posts to write — about Alvin Ailey and about Rasta Thomas’s Rock the Ballet which, okay, I admit — I liked!!! — despite (or perhaps of) Roslyn’s almost hilariously scathing review! I liked it, but can definitely see how others wouldn’t.

And Alvin Ailey — they’re in the midst of their City Center season (which ends January 3rd). I’ve loved most of their season premieres — there are several — namely Hymn and Divining by Judith Jamison, and Dancing Spirit by Ronald K. Brown (photo above of Matthew Rushing in Dancing Spirit, photo by Paul Kolnik). Hymn is a really breathtaking tribute to Alvin Ailey — the man himself. It was made in 1993 right after he passed away. It’s with spoken word by Anna Deavere Smith, based on her interviews with Jamison and the company dancers from that time, and on Ailey’s words themselves; choreography is by Jamison. And, Divining and Dancing Spirit are both part African, part ballet / modern. Dancing Spirit starts slowly, then builds to a really beautiful crescendo. Audience went nuts with applause after it premiered, and justifiably so! Definitely do try to go see it before the season ends.

The “20 years” tribute to Jamison’s time with the company is also a great program. Exposes you to excerpts of many of the ballets she commissioned over the years, which I now want badly to see.

Oh, interesting tidbit: one of my friends told me she sat next to SYTYCD’s Tyce Diorio at one of the Ailey perfs, and he highly recommended to her Hymn and Divining. So, see, I know what I’m talking about 🙂

I also need to blog about Nine, the film, which I saw yesterday. Thought it was okay, not as good as I was expecting. The musical numbers were excellent — especially those led by Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, and Fergie. But the story line is rather boring and slow-moving. And I hate to say this but this is the first thing I haven’t loved Daniel Day Lewis in. He just didn’t become the character to me, like he normally does; just couldn’t inhabit this role. Weird because his Unbearable Lightness of Being character had many of the same flaws, and he was so much more believable as Tomasz than he was here as Guido. Anyone else seen it?

My website (and, thus, this blog) is going to be up and down a bit over the next couple days because I’m having some of the pages re-done. But I will resume blogging very soon. In the meantime, get thee to Alvin Ailey!

Oh, and happy holidays 🙂