Renee Robinson gave the farewell performance every dancer would love to give at City Center Theater on Sunday evening. After more than 30 years of professional dancing, she was still a compelling image of style, moving with verve and elan at the heart of two of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's classic works.
A program entitled :Celebrating Renee Robinson" at New York City Center Theater on Sunday evening feted the dancer, who is retiring from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Jiri Kylian's "Petite Mort" is predictably a dance of duets. It takes two, as they say in another sexual euphemism, to tango. But before the six couples here reach their stylized climaxes, their entwined limbs alternately thrusting and splaying, the audience sees the men alone, moving in tandem with sinuous fencing foils: foreplay with props.
When Judith Jamison retired in 2010 from what had become, under her two-decade leaderhsip, one of the most popular danc ecompanies in the world, some of us had already devised a wish list for her successor: what to keep and what to change.
On Wednesday afternoon, choreographer Kyle Abraham, finalizing his look for a curtain call, rips out the price tags from the wide-leg tuxedo pants and the white shirt emblazoned with a large blurred yellow flower he's chosen from Comme des Garcons.
I always have the best seat in the house at the Dance Magazine Awards because I get to watch from backstage. On Monday night I got to see Hee Seo's extra swooning surrender when she fell back into Cory Stearns arms in Tudor's 'The Leaves Are Fading'.
Improvisational jazz is not exactly a choreographer's best friend. If the musicians can change up tempos and tunes, dancers can do their best to chuck their assigned steps and wing it.
When Robert Battle took over as the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last year, it was the equivalent of being given the helm of a luxury cruise ship. In the scrappy modern-dance world most directors are still in paddle boats.
This month Renee Robinson will make her last signature entrance as the "woman with the umbrella" in Alvin Ailey's Revelations.