Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has appeared at Sadler’s Wells on a regular three-to-four-year cycle over recent decades. Familiarity is the company’s touchstone. Every programme is a mixed bill and almost every performance ends with Ailey’s signature work, Revelations, created in 1960 just two years after the company was formed. Performing the same choreography at every show would be unacceptable in any other company but for AAADT it is their much-cherished DNA.
Continuity lies at the heart of this outstanding company, which has had only three artistic directors in 65 years with Robert Battle the latest incumbent (since 2011). There has also been a strong familiarity amongst the dance troupe: a quarter of this season’s 32-strong ensemble have more than a decade’s service, although twelve are new to the company since the 2019 tour. Many of the leading dancers (such as Jacqueline Green and Jamar Roberts) have now moved on so this season represented something of a post-pandemic watershed. On this evidence, the company’s fundamental qualities (including elegance, expressiveness, equanimity) remain undiminished.
Two programmes, Contemporary Voices and Ailey Classics, neatly contrasted old and new repertoire, opening with Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? followed by a pair of brief works by Battle with the second programme being a retro collection of Ailey’s choreography from the 1970s. Both programmes were unsurprisingly completed by Revelations, the opening night’s performance of which was a tad under par, lacking the emotional tug that pulls one into the work. However, all that bite was thrillingly restored two nights later with the dancers back on top form, bringing their exhilarating performances into harmonious alignment with the traditional gospel songs and Ves Harper’s simple but so effective décor and costumes.
The season could not have started more auspiciously than with Abraham’s beautiful work, made in 2022 with the full collaboration of the dancers. It achieves that magical cocktail of being a holistic work comprising episodic segments, each flowing seamlessly, one into the next. Abraham gives character to otherwise anonymous dancers, not just in their solos, duets and trios but also in the human interruptions and interactions with which he punctuates the work. It’s a fluid mix of dance styles referencing a myriad of genres from ballet to vogue. The music is a similarly eclectic playlist from The Flamingos’ original recording of I Only Have Eyes for You to the R&B of Summer Walker and the hip hop rap of Kendrick Lamar. I was mesmerised throughout by the silence of the dancers’ graceful movement, landing from jumps without a sound.
The pair of Battle’s brief works illustrated a diverse range, beginning with For Four (2021) danced to the haunting jazz trumpet of Wynton Marsalis’ Delfeayo’s Dilemma, followed by the duet Unfold, made in 2007 to a recording of African American soprano Leontyne Price singing Dupuis Le Jour from Gustave Charpentier’s opera, Louise; danced with great feeling by Ashley Mayeux and Jeroboam Bozeman.
The three Ailey revivals brought a swathe of nostalgia to anyone – like me – who grew up in the 70s. Duke Ellington’s melodious music (in both The River and Pas De Duke) seemed like the soundtrack to the age. In Pas De Duke the back screen was dominated by the still bubbles of a lava lamp. How 70s can you get?
The River is replete with Ailey’s signature movements – consistent since Revelations – such as fast spins, often with straight arms held at an angle above the head with swirling rotations led from the upper body, and off-kilter arabesques. Deidre Rogan delivered an outstanding A-Z of his choreography in the Vortex solo. The River contains humorous references from ballet (such as the four cygnets in Swan Lake) to Broadway showgirls. Pas De Duke (1976) was originally made for Ailey’s muse and successor, Judith Jamison to dance with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the pairing of Jacquelin Harris and Patrick Coker did that heritage proud in terms of their gorgeous chemistry. Both works were very much of their time, but I loved them nonetheless!
Cry was choreographed by Ailey in 1971 as a birthday gift for his mother, representing what he perceived then to be the racial and social challenges for a Black woman. Nowadays I expect that some would cavil at the idea of a man expressing the feelings of a woman in art and – as a white man – I feel unqualified to comment on that context other than to remark on how Constance Stamatiou’s 16-minute performance was arrestingly powerful through her charismatic expressiveness: a tour de force by a dancer now in her 16th year with the company (she still has some way to catch Vernand Gilmore – the opening night soloist in I Wanna Be Ready from Revelations – who joined in 1997).
Alvin Ailey founded his company at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement and one can only imagine the prejudice he faced as a gay black man from the deep South (Ailey was born in Texas) until his death in 1989, aged just 58, from an AIDS-related illness. By then, thankfully his reputation was already secured by this everlasting legacy in American culture.
