Dance excellence is something you can always expect with the Ailey company, or, to use its formal name, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. But opening night of its four day stay at the Auditorium this month zoomed past even the highest of expectations as soon as the curtain rose.
As an arts medium that conveys messages, makes commentary and tells stories without the use of words, it’s often fascinating how choreographers as storytellers write their tales in movement. Busk, a surreal allegory created by Canadian born New York based Aszure Barton tells its tale with such ferocious innovation it makes your heart race. The first thing you notice is the lighting. Spectacular in its simplicity, the way a softly sheathed shaft of light drops down on the dark stage making the whole scene drip with ominous mystery. A solo guitar plays beautifully and contemplatively as the dance unfolds. Nicole Pearce can take credit for the lighting and the stage design; creating an unforgettable template that’s sustained throughout the 30-minute work.
Busk has been described in many ways since it premiered in 2009. Highly cerebral, inescapably captivating, it’s like a flower that opens and closes, and opens and closes again as it shifts from chapter to chapter, from virtuosic solos to exquisitely eerie ensemble segments that are at once ancient in their look and futuristic in their feel. Music helps fuel the emotional engine driving the parables coursing through Busk. Grand choral pieces like August Soderman’s 1868 Ett Bondbröllop fill the dance as much as the solitary instrumentation that usually accompanies its solo artists.
Exemplifying dance perfection is another hallmark of the Ailey legacy and, after shedding their hooded anonymity, each of the soloists delighted the audience with craftsmanship as remarkable for its subtlety as for its feats of dance proficiency. And when the ensemble danced as a collective, it was anything but conventional. Instead, it moved as a mass of one, collapsing and rising with the dancers’ head and faces turning and staring; rotating their necks with the elasticity of owls, peering out like extra-terrestrials savants.
Ode, conceived by Resident Choreographer and dancer Jamar Roberts and the night’s second piece, is universally appreciated for its beauty and poignancy. Just created last year, the dance is a reaction to the world. Disturbed by the toll of the nation’s gun violence, and particularly mindful of young black men who appear to have been targeted and killed because of their race, Mr. Roberts conceived Ode in remembrance of Trayvon Martin and those like him. Because the choreographer wanted the work to be about love, it is not a vengeful piece. It’s six dancers, all male, project harmony, empathy and solidarity. As one falls, another picks him up. If two fall, the resiliency remains intact and the support continues. The tone is lyrical, even soft, but the message of indomitability still resonates.
After the intermission and the notion of time gets shoved out the door because Revelations is about to begin, you realize why so many Ailey dancers rhapsodize so eloquently about how much they love the company’s signature dance. It represents so many things. It embodies Alvin Ailey’s genius. It represents his difficult exodus from Texas and all that he endured to rise to unparalleled success. It signifies the continued struggle African Americans still contend with to realize social equity. It taps into the universal human challenge to rise above obstacles and barriers to achieve self-fulfillment; making it infinitely relatable.
And, as I was so sternly reminded immediately after the show, Alvin Ailey was not just a genius. That word isn’t big enough to recognize his gifts and contributions. The stories he told through dance, Revelations in particular, changed history. That’s probably why time stops when you hear the first strains of music launching the dance and the entire hall surrenders to its spell. Since the impact of Revelations changes every time one sees it danced, you wait to see what the interpretation will feel like this time. Always performed impeccably, certain dancers will inevitably impress the eye with the sublimity or the passion of their performance. Just like Sarah Daley-Perdomo did in Fix Me, Jesus during her duet with Jamar Roberts and Clifton Brown’s peerless perfection did as he danced I Wanna Be Ready alone.
Every year Revelations seems to whiz by faster and faster. It likely only seems that way because no matter how much you know it, you never really want it to end. And although it may be just dreaming impossible dreams to wish the company could find a way to expand it, making patience your friend would be a better tactic. Next year you can bathe in the revitalizing mystique of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater experience all over again.
Ailey Revealed
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
March 4 – March 8, 2020
Auditorium Theatre
50 East Ida B. Wells Drive
Chicago, IL 60605
www.auditoriumtheatre.org
