Variety is the spice of Ailey. As artistic director Robert Battle winds up his second season, he continues to broaden the repertory - making for programming where the choroegraphy is (almost) as good as the dancing.
Last Saturday, I saw a stunning Alvin Ailey evening of pieces like "Streams," "The Evolution Of A Secured Feminine," and "Urban Folk Dance." The night ended with "Minus 16," a jagged, exciting ensemble piece, performed in business suits and hats, with choreography by Ohad Naharin.
If you haven't seen a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in a while, you might forget just how accomplished the company's dancers are. You know they can do anything, but the cisible evidence can leave you reeling.
A shaman casts a spell in "From Before," the legendary dance by choroegapher Garth Fagan, which Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has revived this season at NY City Center.
A Saturday matinee at Ailey is a marvelous mix of kids and adults in holiday finery and some of the best dancers on the planet going all out to give their guests a good time.
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.
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.