A mixed bill in dance lives or dies on the caliber of its music: few understand this more instinctively than Alvin Ailey, who was drawn to African American spirituals and blues; to Ellington and other jazz luminaries; to Masekela, Simone, Vaughan Williams and Bartók. Ailey’s companies today expand on his groundbreaking canon of embodied history and embodied dreams, the latest program from Ailey II built on compelling scores: a sprinkling of Chuck Berry classics; jazz and house tracks with futuristic energy; Game of Thrones and Conclave soundtracks; Doechii – not Alvin Ailey’s playlist, perhaps, but very much his standard.
Four new works had been taken for a spin around the US before arriving at the Joyce and now look well settled on the dancers. Chalvar Monteiro’s handsomely designed Berry Dreamin’ echoed Ailey’s popular format of short dances linked musically to trace the daily joys and trials of a tight-knit community. In iridescent shifts, the dancers channeled the cool, gritty swagger of songs that dreamed big, celebrating the American postwar fascination with going places in fast cars. They contemplated grief and loss, too, under the arc of a stylized laundry line that reached up improbably to the sky. Silky phrases, sweeping arms, sharp hip checks, torso hinges, legs thrust like arrows looked familiar but were elevated by these dancers. Yet the choreography rarely connected with Berry’s poetic lyrics; despite flashes of temper from Jennifer M. Gerken and vivid encounters between Xavier Logan, Jordyn White and Meredith Brown, this community seemed to dance to the radio rather than inhabit its songs.
Less proved more in Rena Butler’s In Session, which kicked off with a smoking visual tribute to Doechii’s legendary 2025 Grammys performance. A phalanx of dancers, costumed in a riff on the short ‘schoolboy’ suits designed by Thom Browne for Doechii’s crew, exploded in youthful rebellion – expressed in a mix of modern and hip-hop, to the recorded clamor of adolescent voices and the music of the irrepressible Doechii. The dancers’ stiffly regimented unison suggested fear, but not for long. Logan gave an inspired, camp portrayal of a drill sergeant or despotic teacher before his ‘students’ flipped the script. A keen sense of theatre framed each incident, the dancers’ deliberate self-consciousness reading as an embrace of newfound freedom.
Carley Cruzat Brooks delivered an arresting solo, impelled by a galvanic energy that seemed to shoot through her limbs. Gerken and Eric J. Vidaña tangled with a grace that quickly ignited; elsewhere, I found myself tracking the electrifying drama in Gerken’s face. Stunning, too, was Darion Turner’s solo, as an outsider who wins acceptance into the group. For all its bravado (“Cut my mic' off 'cause I'm 'bout to misbehave,” teased Doechii), In Session remains a brilliant study in discipline and restraint – circumscribed by a spare vocabulary that includes the striking use of body percussion to convey both menace and allegiance.
Strongly theatrical, too, was Renée I. McDonald’s Likes vs Life, in which Meredith Brown, Darion Turner and Jordyn White took turns embodying the harms of cyberbullying. Chilling film-score fragments and hazy lighting hammered the point home as the dancers hammered into one another. Title and program notes robbed the piece of mystery. The dancers took no prisoners.
Another trio beset by gratuitous program notes was My’Kal Stromile’s Third Person Point of View. Carley Cruzat Brooks, Xavier Logan and Eric J. Vidaña were in an intimate relationship and in different colored skin-tight tops. Evocative sax, drums, synths and bird calls failed to stir any shift in the tic-laden choreography. Very fine dancing kept us enthralled.
The Joyce run was anchored by Ailey’s 1970 classic Streams, set to a crackling Miroslav Kabeláč score for gongs and percussion. Through brooding passages, clanging eruptions and serene interludes, Ailey – in his first long-form, plotless work – conjured an underwater world, subtly layering in observations on thorny human relations. For Ailey II – the crucible where younger dancers come into their own – its narrow, fiercely elegant lexicon throws down a gauntlet.
One by one the ensemble emerged, pushing eloquently against rushing waters. They moved through quick drops, sudden freezes and precarious one-legged balances with striking control. Coolly combative, Cruzat Brooks hurled herself at Xhosa Scott; he met her in kind, and together they negotiated a high overhead lift in backbend as he dashed into the wings with her aloft. Logan and Vidaña unleashed bold scissor jumps and double tours, suspended between duel and alliance, before a high-strung yet humorous turf war broke out between the sexes. A shift to partnering brought intimacy, building from gentle rocking to heroic press lifts, the latter exposing a few less than seamless moments in an otherwise polished performance. Significant, too, is the grace with which Ailey integrated same-sex coupling, part of his quietly revolutionary mainstreaming of marginalized identities.
