Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Lincoln Center season (6/8-19) What’s going on here? I exit onto the Lincoln Center Plaza after watching “21st Century Voices” one of the five programs that make up the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s season at the former New York State Theater. Although I’ve seen plenty of spiritual aspiration and yearning toward the light, I haven’t noticed many … [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...]