Saturday December 24, 2011 matinee - Paul Taylor's ARDEN COURT is one of the 20th century's great dance masterpieces; this season it is being danced by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (photo above by Mark Lennihan) during their season at City Center, the first Taylor work to be performed by the Ailey Company. Looking at my packed December calendar a couple of weeks ago, I realized that today was going to be my one Ailey opportunity of the year, and how fortunate that ARDEN COURT was part of an extremely attractive programme:
Arden Court
Cry
The Hunt
Revelations
One of the finest dancers on the current scene, Kanji Segawa, joined Ailey earlier this year and Kokyat and I were especially happy to find Kanji dancing a lot this afternoon. Kokyat photographed Kanji (above) dancing with MORPHOSES at the Guggenheim in the Autumn of 2010. His brilliant, buoyant leaps in the men's diagonal entree passage of ARDEN COURT were outstanding, and he flung himself into the non-stop demands of Robert Battle's dark and sexy THE HUNT with characteristic flair.
Taylor danced by Ailey looks phenomenal. The dancers, in their sleek costumes, are propelled with effortless grace and power thru the demanding combinations, swept along on the vivid and superby danceable music of William Boyce. ARDEN COURT was set on the Ailey Company by one of the all-time great Taylor dancers, Cathy McCann.
Briana Reed (above, photographed by Paul Kolnik) danced the extended three-part Alvin Ailey solo CRY; with her unfettered extension and combination of strength and tenderness, Ms. Reed scored a huge hit with the crowd and was greeted with rockstar ovations, thoroughly deserved.
Robert Battle's powerful all-male ensemble work THE HUNT (above, Eduardo Patino photo) is set to a driven, percussive score by Les Tambours du Bronx. With six men (it seems like more) in long black skirts swirling and sailing thru the air, this work is sexy, ritualistic and mysterious all at once. There are few moments of repose in this martial-arts inspired, combative dance.
Revelation: Clifton Brown, above, photographed by Kokyat earlier this year in rehearsal with Lar Lubovitch. We've been so fortunate to have been in the studio with Clifton several times in 2011 while he's been working with Lubovitch and with Jessica Lang Dance. Today, in Ailey's classic REVELATIONS Clifton burst onto the stage in Sinner Man and treated us to some simply magnificent dancing. In the finale he was a god-like cavalier, radiating both majesty and warmth.
Each section of REVELATIONS is set to traditional spirituals and gospel hymns, celebrating congregation and community while sometimes investigating individual journeys of the spirit. One memorable segment is I Wanna Be Ready, superbly danced today by Michael Francis McBride. In the finale, the women appear in marigold-yellow gowns with fans on a sweltering summer afternoon for a jubilant cotillion with their handsome beaus.
I hardly ever have a chance to see the Ailey Company; their season always falls at the busiest time of the year. This afternoon's performance showed them to be on peak form as the Robert Battle era commences with a bang! Such splendid dancers: I need to get to know them better.