Alvin Ailey was to dance what August Wilson was to drama. Each in his own way chronicled and celebrated the black experience in America through the aesthetic of performance.
Since Ailey’s death in 1989, Judith Jamison has carried the torch and the current UK tour is as much a tribute to her tenure as it is to the company’s founder.
Programme 2 includes one of her most moving works, Hymn, which utilises vocal recordings by actress Anna Deavere Smith of stories, vignettes and fragments of personal history contributed by company members. A succession of fleeting, rapid movements are followed by sequences of slow extensions - a glancing blow is followed by a tender caress. There is a terrific relay of figures in Dance as a woman is passed along a line of men, followed by another and another. There is a liquid solo by Linda Celeste Sims in Black Dress. It is poignant and bracing in turns and there is a singular sense of mischief in Smith’s voice-over for The Mask, danced with a spiky, sensual joy by Rachael McLaren.
Anointed by Christopher L Higgins is even better, a trilogy driven by the music of Moby and Sean Clements. Here the spirit of Ailey lives in the alliance of loose-wristed, wide-legged, hip-shaking Afro-Caribbean swing with the more formally-limned structures of jazz ballet. Purple-clad women strut across the stage as if they own it and there is real physical drama in the spectacular leaps and catches and rapid, complex lifts. At the conclusion of the ever-present Revelations, the sine qua non of Ailey’s work, the audience are on their feet. Another hot night with the spirit of Alvin.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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