I think I first saw Ronald K. Brown’s Grace twenty years ago when it was brand new and performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. Last week I saw it again, when it opened the 2019 SummerScape Festival at Bard College, this time performed by the choreographer’s own group: Ronald K. Brown/Evidence: A Dance Company. The work itself hasn’t changed much, but the context has. This year’s … [Read more...]
Fire and Ice: Both Burn
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs at New York's City Center. The members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have always been able to do practically anything a choreographer might ask of them: thrust their legs astonishingly high, spin like tops, act sassy or sexy, and dance with an ardor that burns across the footlights. But it’s always exciting to see how they … [Read more...]
Just What Are We Celebrating?
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premieres Aszure Barton's Lift at City Center. Any choreographer invited to make a piece for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater must come to the first rehearsal with both elation and trepidation. The Ailey dancers are like racehorses—sleek, swift, eager, ablaze with temperament. What can you feed them? How do you groom them? Are you up to the … [Read more...]
Home Is Where The Dance Is
What do we crave from the thirty dancers who make up the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company? That they be gorgeous, sleek, limber, powerful, virtuosic—sassy when the choreography calls for it, soulful ditto. They do not stint. They can knock dancing into the stratosphere or into our laps. Sometimes they turn the wattage up too high—forgoing subtleties for the highest, the biggest, the baddest, the … [Read more...]