When Christopher Wilson, FCLC ’17, found out that he had made the company of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, he immediately called his mother, who screamed and dropped the phone. “It took, like, a good two minutes for her to come back to me, so I just sort of sat there, just listening to her, and I was also crying at the same time,” he said.
In Lazarus — the stunning finale to Rennie Harris’s dark trilogy for the Ailey company — a cluster of dancers sways on their toes, heads cocked as if their necks had been broken by hanging. Others roll forward like corpses carried away on the tide. In a recurring motif that evokes the Pietà, one person gently drags another, collapsed in his arms, across the stage. This is the “strange fruit” of African-American history. When the dancers pray, they shake their clasped hands like gamblers desperate for a lucky roll.
For Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to have lasted 60 years is an unlikely feat. Even more extraordinary: Almost half that span has elapsed since the death of Alvin Ailey. How has the company survived? How has it persevered the spirit of its founder? At the start of its program at New York City Center on Friday, the troupe offered rote answers to those entwined questions in the form of "Becoming Ailey," an anniversary slide show of old photos and footage that tried to bring Ailey into the theater by projecting his image on a scrim.
As a master choreographer, Rennie Harris knows a thing or two about himself. He doesn't gravitate toward making works about a particular topic. And he doesn't plan his dances in advance. "The movement tells you what the piece is going to be," said Mr. Harris, a Philadelphia native who has deftly Brough hip-hop and street dance to the concert stage. "You close your eyes and see if you feel something. Maybe it's music - or maybe you've read something and a story starts to unfold in your head. That's what I often look for: That story. You create the movement and all of a sudden as they're doing it, you see the next movement."
As a master choreographer, Rennie Harris knows a thing or two about himself. He doesn't gravitate toward making works about a particular topic. And he doesn't plan his dances in advance. "The movement tells you what the piece is going to be," said Mr. Harris, a Philadelphia native who has deftly brought hip-hop and street dance to the concert stage.
Ruschell Boone looks at the history of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater with current and former artistic directors Robert Battle and Judith Jamison. They also discuss the 60th season, which is having performances at New York City Center through December 30th.
Ruschell Boone looks at the history of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater with current and former artistic directors Robert Battle and Judith Jamison. They also discuss the 60th season, which is having performances at New York City Center through December 30th.
"My mind goes into imagination land," the dancer Jacqueline Green (left) said about performing a luminous solo from Alvin Ailey's "The Lark Ascending." "At the
The choreographer Ronald K. Brown stepped into a big studio at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and greeted the dancers with warm hugs. Then, almost without a word, he began to move, his feet and shoulders swaying to the beat, his upper body undulating slightly. "The Love," a Malian song with a slow, hypnotizing groove, was playing on the sound system. The dancers gathered in a semicircle around him, moving to the rhythm. Just like that, they were drawn into the spirit of the dance.
When the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company takes to the stage of New York City Center for the opening of its 60th anniversary on Wednesday night, it will have an unexpected guest of sorts. Namely, Alvin Ailey himself.