by Leigh Witchel
The Ailey & Ellington program underwent several substitutions: a sign of what was to come for the city and the season. Losing “The River” and “Pas de Duke,” it became a mixed bill with an early Ailey piece and a solo by Robert Battle swapped in.
“Blues Suite,” one of Ailey’s earliest works from 1958, began with the sound of a train approaching and receding, and a bell tolling before the music began. The company appeared on chairs and ladders: the women in white lace dresses with black lace shawls and black fans, the men in black muscle shirts with red scarves. The vivid colors and woozy atmosphere felt like the morning after the night before.
A short male solo led into a male quintet. To viewers used to ballet, it was striking how the company approaches group work. The glue wasn’t conformity, but energy. The men looked powerful together; they were all on the same timing, but not doing the same thing. That energy was throughout the company; you could see it in the female trio that followed by how Ashley Kaylynn Green attacked the contractions.
The next duet to “Backwater Blues,” was almost an Apache dance: Constance Stamatiou in shocking pink and Jeroboam Bozeman performed a duet of attraction and repulsion. Their tussle over her red fringed shawl turned into an uneasy tango. At the end she sent him tumbling, then swatted at him with her hanky; but that only got her knocked off her perch, swept into his arms and off the stage.
The scene turned into a nightclub with the group returning, but also a late arrival, Ghrai DeVore-Stokes. She was drunk and manic, groping inappropriately and on a mission to find a man. It wasn’t working. The party disintegrated into comic chaos and Green led a closing Charleston. “Good Morning Blues” returned and the cast greeted the sun as if it were the hardest thing.
With more than six decades’ distance, you can see the models Ailey worked from, and who may have gotten some ideas from him. “Blues Suite” was a theatricalized version of an evening out; the heightened slice of life wasn’t that far off Massine’s “Gaîté Parisienne.” DeVore-Stoke’s comic character was echoed a few decades later, in a similar red dress, by Paul Taylor in “Offenbach Overtures.” In the rough and tumble pas de deux, there’s even a bloodline (or common ancestor) to Forsythe’s “Love Songs.”
“Reflections in D” was the only Ellington ballet that remained on the program. Michael Jackson Jr., shirtless in blue pants, opened by standing at the center and reaching or spinning round to stare out and face us.
The solo was brief, the length of an aria, and akin to one in purpose and intent. Ailey solos seem to have a style; a slow and pensive mood and virtuosity expressed as control rather than tricks.
Director Robert Battle’s “In/Side” also had the feeling of an aria, only this time a mad scene. As Nina Simone’s haunting interpretation of “Wild is the Wind” played, Yannick Lebrun began with his back to us.
Wearing nothing but tiny briefs, he reached over and laboriously moved sideways by pushing his leg out and catching up to it. His distress became a whirl to a splat down to the floor to a silent howl. This cri de coeur became a repeated choreographic motif.
The solo, again the length of a song, ended with him walking back into darkness. Lebrun’s impeccable execution, and the operatic pitch Battle intended, walked a line between emotion and self-conscious drama.
“Revelations” was the closer, as it often is. Jacquelin Harris danced, along with James Gilmer, on this same stage a few weeks ago with Twyla Tharp. With her home company, Harris was part of the baptismal couple with Vernard J. Gilmore in “Take Me To The Water.”
In a powerful company, Harris was notably powerful, with religious intensity in her body and attack. Gilmore danced as if transported. Both turned up the energy, but danced as if they would do the same thing if we weren’t there.
A different trio performed in “Sinner Man,” but with similar dynamics as a few days prior. This time it was Gilmer tumbling to the ground, Lloyd A. Boyd III splitting 180 into jeté en tournant and Patrick Coker igniting under himself like a firecracker.
Alas, that turned into the season finale, as all subsequent performances were canceled. Even without much Ellington, at least this much Ailey got to the stage.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Blues Suite,” “Reflections in D,” “In/Side,” “Revelations” – Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center, New York, NY
December 14, 2021
Cover: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in “Revelations.” Photo credit © Gert Krautbauer.
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