Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre: Night Creatures, Pas de Duke, The River, Revelations
Sadler's Wells, London, 4 - 15 September 2006
Alvin Ailey set up his dance company almost 50 years ago in an attempt to create a company that would represent all the best that black American dancers had to offer. Now considered something of an American national institution, (in 1989, the year of his death they named a street after him) his company is still growing and going strong under the direction of Judith Jamison who Ailey named his successor.
The current tour features three programmes which aim to highlight the enormous range of, not just Ailey's works but those of other influential dancers from the 50s and 60s. I was in attendance for the first programme, a retrospective of some of Ailey's best known works, encompassing four pieces dating from 1960 to 1976.
The first three of these pieces all use the music of Duke Ellington, who on more than one occasion created music for Ailey, and its complex, technical jazz suits Ailey's choreographic style. Ailey constructed his pieces to reflect and mirror the music and its mood, and in several of the pieces the dancers slip between strong, elegant balletic movement and jazz dancing more reminiscent of the 1920s.
The dancers of the company are uniformly strong and perform Ailey's pieces with both stripped-down strength and with a genuine sense of play and fun. However, noticeably in the first three pieces, especially Pas de Duke, while you marvel at the beautiful shapes and ever inventive ways the two dancers move across the stage there is a perceptible lack of emotion. Whether this was Ailey's intention or not it failed to evoke any real sense of romance or wonder in me.
However, while I remained underwhelmed by much of this showcase, the evening was completely redeemed by the final piece, Revelations – Ailey's best known piece. Using African-American religious music and spirituals it was both deeply moving and uplifting. In the first section a collection of dancers dressed in various rich tones of red, brown and gold split apart and then re-converge; this abstract section is indicative of the idea of collective and individual African-American experiences.
Further sequences follow and while you are aware that Ailey is trying to express the history and experiences of African-Americans, from slavery to freedom, you also become aware of the intense and complex connection of this history with religious belief. Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in a section in the middle, in which a female dancer moves around the stage followed by a male dancer who supports her and helps her, at times lifting her and twisting her into amazing positions. With the soft mournful music, a sense is conveyed of a woman struggling through her life, but helped and supported by her maker.
The final section of the piece is the most memorable. The whole cast, nearly twenty dancers in all, converge on the stage, the women in large yellow dresses, and hats, holding large palm fans. Once again there is a visual echo of revival meetings, but there is also a strong sense of people delighting in the movement of their own bodies – and many people around me in the audience seemed genuinely moved and uplifted by this piece in particular.
This programme of Ailey's work is an interesting one, evoking his philosophy as a choreographer and dancer, even if not all the pieces have aged well. However, if you have never seen any of his work, this is an ideal way to become introduced.
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