At Revelations on Friday, the gloriously craggy singer Ella Mitchell belted out the gospels while Judith Jamison in conductor mode coaxed a low, spooky sound from the chorus and students from the Ailey school dashed into the auditorium to mirror the drama onstage.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater featured the old and the new at its opening night Wednesday. It's signature performance, "Revelations," marked its 50th anniversary and coincided with the premiere of "The Hunt," choreographed by incoming artistic director Robert Battle.
Alvin Ailey died 21 years ago, on Dec. 1, the very date that his namesake company opened its annual season at City Center this year. He would surely have been astounded and delighted to see the by-now ritualized Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater opening night: the red carpet, the photographers, the stars, the speeches, the money.
Alvin Ailey fetes 'Revelations,' its singular masterpiece, all season long. Turning 50 is not always cause for outright celebration. Many of us are too depressed. And then that AARP card comes in the mail.
In 1976, Alvin Ailey paid homage to Duke Ellington in a season that produced a particularly majestic dance: 'Three Black Kings'. The work - depicting King Balthazar, King Solomon and Martin Luther King Jr. - hasn't veen seen in its entirety in more than 30 years.
Watching Matthew Rushing and Renee Robinson in Revelations, I was laughing and crying at the same time. I could weep because of his soft undulations in "Wade in the Water," and laugh with the way she flutters her fan at the other women in the last section.
Members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform 'Revelations' nearly as often as ordinary people brush their teeth. This magnificent work, created by Alvin Ailey in 1960, is a dance on land and in water, a journey through African-American spiritual music and, for dancers, an act of reverence for the generations that came before.
This Wednesday, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicks off it's holiday season at City Center in Midtown. The Theater is considered on of the world's greatest dance companies.
For someone who doesn't dance anymore, Judith Jamison turns up onstage with surprising frequency. That's because her colleagues at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater can't let her retire without acknowledging the key role she has played both as a flamboyant star of the 1960s and '70s and as the company's artistic director since 1989.
"Great gods cannot ride little horses." So goes the Haitian proverb, and when it comes to Geoffrey Holder, it's true. The dancer, choreographer, painter, costume designer, actor, and musicial does nothing in a small way.