Tag: Night Creature

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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 II

 

Last night for the first time I saw Alvin Ailey II, Alvin Ailey’s studio company comprised mainly of young dancers. Wow! The dancers were so remarkable — all of them! I couldn’t believe it. Usually when you see the studio company the dancers are up and coming, not quite as good as the ones in the full touring company, but these dancers truly amazed me. No wonder so many go on to join the main troupe.

There were four pieces: three modern and one jazzy, classical Ailey (which I really loved). First was Valse (pictured above), by a young, highly accomplished choreographer, Sidra Bell, with modern music that had lots of percussion (which I liked) by Dennis Bell. This piece reminded me a bit of Jorma Elo with a lot of movement alternating between sharp and staccato and more flowing, and lots of jagged shapes and rather intensely-thrust lines created in part by hyperextended arms and legs (which I like, but realize is very modern and not to everyone’s tastes).

Josh Johnson in particular stood out to me. He’s a tall dancer with long long lines, like Antonio Douthit and Yannick Lebrun and Amos Machanic in Alvin Ailey. Maybe because of his long lines I noticed him more here, but he’d reach up skyward with one arm, then grab it with the other hand and bring it back down, as if the arm was out of control and he needed to bring it back in line. This kind of mechanical movement, like the body struggling to break free from robotic-like movements imposed on it, is what reminded me of Elo. Costumes were also intriguingly incongruous: male dancers wore black tops with high necklines and puffed sleeves that looked king-ly, along with spandex biking-shorts; women wore corset-looking tops with ballet-like tulle skirts. It was an interesting dance, definitely with a dark undercurrent, like Balanchine’s Valse.

Second was “The Calling”, a short section from Jessica Lang’s Splendid Isolation II. Fana Fraser danced this solo beautifully. She wore a white gown with a long long train that spread out in all directions across the floor, nearly taking up the stage. She began with her back toward the audience, but turned somehow under that dress without disturbing the intricate fan-like pattern made by the flared skirt on the floor, and lowered and raised her legs so that it looked like she was melting into the ground, then rising up from it. The rest of the dance consisted of lovely arm movement while her feet remained stationery.

Next was Hope (The Final Rise) by AAII artistic director Troy Powell.

 

 

This was one of my favorites, but it’s hard to explain why! The piece was full of energy and there was a lot of very difficult movement, with fast kicks and whizzing spins going into difficult-looking lifts. I felt like this was the artistic director’s test for the dancers, and they came through with flying colors 🙂 The music, by David Chesky, had a strong, powerful, even militant feel to it, with a voice chanting, “Rise up, children, right now.”

And then, the evening ended with my favorite piece of the night, the very well-liked George Faison’s Movin’ On.

 

 

This was a jazzy balletic piece — a combination of both classical ballet and jazz steps — that was wonderfully reminiscent of classic Alvin Ailey. It takes place in a night club, much like Night Creature and Blues Suite, and consists of a set of unique and endearing characters just hanging out, playing music, flirting with each other, dancing the night away, playing starlet, having a good time. There are three men — members of the jazz band — who jump atop chairs and move just like the instruments. There’s a sweetly arrogant Night Creature-like woman who fancies herself a jazz starlet, and struts and glides and jetes across the stage just like one. And there’s a ballerina who becomes attracted to the street boy. I loved the two who danced the latter couple in particular. Both — Megan Jakel and Jarvis McKinley–  stood out to me all night. McKinley moves very well, especially in the more jazzy movements. And I thought Jakel, along with Fana Fraser, were very charismatic. They just had that something that drew your eye to them. And Josh Johnson, who danced one of the musicians, has such a fluidity. The way his arms waved about, they were like water. At one point, Faison himself read (offstage) a Langston Hughes poem, Harlem, which gave the whole thing a rather sobering feel. Like all the fun and frolic was masking a deeper tragedy. Judging by the mass of applause, the rest of the audience loved this dance as well.

I noticed in the program that S. Epatha Merkerson from Law and Order helped to underwrite the costumes for the production. I remember she’d read a poem (onstage) in a recent Complexions piece that I loved. Who knew she was so involved in dance!