Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, under the guidance of newly appointed Artistic Director and former company dancer Alicia Graf Mack, recently embarked on an ambitious, months-long United States tour. One of their first stops was Atlanta Georgia, where, Graf Mack noted in her opening remarks, the company was thrilled to celebrate Black History Month, for a six-show run at the historic Fox Theatre. I caught the closing matinee.
The program opened with Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, a story of a journey to the promised land that originally premiered in 1999 and was revived by the company in 2024. Graf Mack described Grace as a piece that is becoming one of the company’s signature works, and it is easy to see why. It opens with a solo for an angel-like dancer in white, a hypnotic and calmly powerful Jacquelin Harris, to Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday. Then it quickly turns propulsive, as different groupings of the eleven-dancer cast captivate in a blend of modern and West African dance styles. It looks wonderfully exhausting to dance.
The costumes and lighting tell a story in Grace. At the back of the stage, two black wings extend to form a narrow opening that bisects the stage, and it is lit in different colors for different sections of the dance. In the beginning, framing Harris’s solo, this back panel is lit in a tranquil blue. But when the rest of the cast arrives, it turns red. So, too, do some of the costumes, as several of the dancers are dressed in red for much of Grace’s middle section.
The red back panel makes for a striking image on stage, and one I have seen before – in the ballet Red Angels, which was choreographed for New York City Ballet by the great former Ailey dancer Ulysses Dove in 1994 (five years before the premiere of Grace). Grace also seems to take inspiration from Red Angels in a few of the ways Brown’s dancers transition on and off the stage. They enter and exit through the opening of light, forming striking silhouettes especially against the red. Several times, dancers enter the stage with a walk that Dove employs consistently in Red Angels: a swift, upright walk in parallel, with the dancers’ heads fixed straight ahead of them. These motifs are applied to great effect in Grace, in part because they provide interesting aesthetic counterpoints to some of its other themes, like the deep, rhythmic groundedness of its West African movements. I don’t know if Brown has spoken on this resemblance to Red Angels, but it seemed to me a knowing homage.
The dancers in Grace never stop moving – until they do, all at once, now all dressed in white and suddenly still. Ellington’s Come Sunday returns, and the dancers begin a moving final section with evident purpose, unity and yes, grace. This piece is simply spellbinding from start to finish. I can’t wait to see it again.
Second on the program was Medhi Walerski’s Blink of an Eye. This is a sleek contemporary piece that allowed the dancers to show off their technical range. There were many virtuoso moments that earned applause from the audience. Still, Blink of an Eye felt a bit hollow, especially following the rich, embodied textures of Grace.
Next was former company dancer Jamar Roberts’ Song of the Anchorite, which premiered last year. Song of the Anchorite is a solo set to an adagio from Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and inspired by a 1961 Ailey solo, Hermit Songs. It is a soulful, understated piece, danced with reverence and generosity by Renaldo Maurice.
The program ended, as is tradition, with Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations. Christopher Taylor, Jesse Obremski and Mason Evans were excellent in the explosive Sinner Man section. The Fox Theatre audience clearly knew Revelations well, cheering when every song began and dancing by the end of the Rocka My Soul finale. It was a fitting end to a life-affirming afternoon of dancing, teeming with history and joy.
