by Leigh Witchel
Thankfully, everything resumes. Ailey II returned to their New York home for a post-(ish)-pandemic season, and the first with its new director, Francesca Harper. The headliner and most substantial work on opening night was “Enemy in the Figure,” a dance from one of her old bosses, William Forsythe.
The evening began with curtain speeches by both Harper and main company director Robert Battle, who is now celebrating his first decade on the job. The show opened with two of his most durable works, “The Hunt” and “Takademe.”
As the title suggests, “The Hunt” is about aggression. Costumed in long skirts, Battle choreographed “The Hunt” two decades ago for David Parsons’ company. Ailey II did it a year after, and it entered the main company’s rep in 2010, worked up to a sextet. It was done as a quartet by Ailey II, as it was done originally at Parsons Dance.
It’s a ballet that’s been reworked in gender as well as size; one cast during this run was a female quartet. Yet it feels as if it were created for men; the bare-chested costumes, the dancers staring down one another, beating their chests, gnashing their teeth. With recorded score of pounding drums, the work seems like a blood fever or a juvenile rite of passage. Every now and again after jumping and jumping, up and down, one of the men started to scream.
After a blackout, they raced across the stage to encounter one another two by two. The audience joined in, clapping to the pounding rhythm. It gave the entire cast a lift, but Christopher Taylor also gained a wild smile and almost demonic energy. A slam to the floor and the piece ended; all four men having attacked the steps as if possessed. They took their applause in character and drenched in sweat.
“Takademe” was created in 1999, also for Parsons Dance. It’s a solo, danced here (and originally) by a man, but also cast during the run with women. The soundtrack, by Sheila Chandra, is described in the program as a deconstruction of Kathak. I’m going to quote my friend, Odissi dancer Sooraj Subramaniam, and his interesting assessment on her score: “It’s all over the shop; her own take on the syllables. It’s unconventional in rhythm, and she’s borrowed freely across many traditions. Pretty cool, really.”
Battle used Chandra’s music, but his own vocabulary in a completely different style of movement. It’s fascinating that the work is largely disconnected from references to Indian classical music or dance. One similarity to Kathak, though: Battle was illustrating the score’s complexity, note for step. He pushed the music visualization harder, throwing in torso shimmies and arm rolls. It was a tour de force workout for Elijah Lancaster, who after a pause, crashed to the floor to finish. The one point it felt as if Battle went too far was when he had Lancaster actually lip sync the bols. That was so camp that it felt as if Battle was using the form to get a laugh.
Andrea Miller’s “Psūkhe” was a company commission from 2019, but it didn’t have the intellectual force of an original work. The dancers backed in to a low, loud rumble. Running round the stage, they formed a line, moving and reaching organically. As the women came to the front, the men stomped and shivered in the back. Most of the material seemed familiar; it looked as if it were material Miller was repurposing for a second company.
Melancholy chords switched to pounding rock and there was a long female solo followed by a male duet. The mood was unfocused; a lot of the partnering was done by holding the other person’s head. People flew into one another’s arms, but the free-floating anxiety never came into focus before the dancers slowly exited to opposite sides.
Six more dancers entered costumed with ruffles that echoed flamenco, but did a sort of samba. The dancers attacked it in classic Ailey fashion – they looked their best giving 100% to a pounding beat, and that happened more than once. The dance ended in classic Miller fashion, with one person spasming.
“Freedom Series” by Harper was the closer. The dance had a gimmick prop, but an effective one: globes of light. The globes were effective, easy, practical, and used for obvious metaphors. They were most effective theatrically when the cast rolled them across the stage at high speed as if they were target practice at a shooting gallery. Yes, it has been done before but it didn’t feel as overdone as the more emotional metaphors: people trying to steal someone else’s light, or someone collapsing and everyone coming over to illuminate them with a globe . . .
The piece began with a rumbling ethereal chant. A meandering female trio to loud but emotional music gave way to a long female solo, and so on from solo to duet to group number. “Freedom Series” felt inspired by some of what we already saw before – the tanztheater of Miller, the push and vocabulary of the Forsythe. As someone tasked to develop these dancers, that’s part of what Harper should be doing.
Judged on its own as choreography, the weakness of “Freedom Series” was its Pop-It bead structure. Harper tried to finesse the discrete musical numbers that chopped the ideas into bits by using dancers and their lamps as glue, but the piece didn’t go much of anywhere but on – and on.
“Enemy in the Figure” was only shown in excerpt, without props or a set, but the dancers tore into the force and distortion, again particularly Taylor. Lancaster as well; he practically back flipped. All the dancers were in constant motion, entering and exiting to the pounding electronic score, mostly at a run. Someone would dance a solo or as part of a duet then race to another spot. The performance had a manic energy, almost a desperation.
The Ailey II dancers attacked Forsythe differently than other companies. The point of the Paris Opera Ballet dancers doing “In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated” or “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude” is their overbred facility: those legs and feet. The Ailey dancers weren’t on pointe and aren’t ruthlessly selected for line. They brought many other virtues to the table, and that became merely a point of comparison.
What you saw immediately was how idiomatic they could make the choreography. They weren’t distorting their placement; they were bringing the dancing they do outside of class, in a club or at a party, and integrating it into concert dance. It was the context you might imagine dancers from the 1940’s giving Robbins’ “Interplay” or “Fancy Free.” The energy and connected phrasing the Ailey II dancers brought to “Enemy,” even though it’s over 30 years old, pointed up the vernacular roots of the work.
As with Paul Taylor’s group, Ailey II is the farm team for the main company, and where most of its dancers cut their teeth. The performance showed they’re ready for the next open spot. With any luck, we should see at least a few of these dancers shortly at City Center.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“The Hunt,” “Takademe,” “Psūkhe,” “Enemy in the Figure,” “Freedom Series” – Ailey II
Ailey Citigroup Theater, New York, NY
March 23, 2022
Cover: Christopher Taylor, Jeffrey Robert Robinson III and Travon M. Williams in “Freedom Series.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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