Festival Dance
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater programmes 1&2
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
five stars
Something old, something new, something borrowed… but all of it danced with a bravura ease that wowed the audience, leaving old hands and newbies alike utterly enraptured, applauding loudly and cheering wholeheartedly. Hurrah, indeed!
Alongside heritage works by the company’s founder were other ‘voices’ with their own distinctive styles and influences - the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) clearly resists resting on established laurels. So, cue Programme1 with the ‘borrowed in’ sass and saunter of Twyla Tharp’s Roy’s Joys - set to 40’s and 50’s music by American jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge - and the new street-wise edge of Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? where the ins (and more often outs) of relationships echo a soundtrack of danceable songs and sly humour never eclipses underlying tenderness, sensuality or serious emotions.
Programme 2 showcased Ailey classics, a welcome reminder of the energies and inventiveness that underpinned his choreographies. Memoria (1979) - his tribute to a beloved friend, Joyce Trisler - is essentially a celebration of her inspirational influence as a teacher, her presence felt not just among the Ailey dancers but also the young Scottish performers who joined their ranks. This sharing of moves, their pale unitards giving way to acid brights, becoming a signal image of how dance can be transformative. The River (1981) found Ailey in sparky cahoots with Duke Ellington on a razzy-jazzy ballet that shape-shifts from classical balletic modes - drolly clever nods towards Swan Lake! - to hot hoofing, with the metaphysical undertow of flowing water ever-present in music and moves.
Which brings us to Revelations, the talismanic work that closes both programmes. If anything represents the AAADT bone-marrow DNA, this is it, an evocation of Ailey’s upbringing with its gospel music an affirmation of spirituality and grace that shines out of the choreography and from every pore of the dancers’ bodies. Individually, and as an ensemble, they have ‘wow factor’ all the way.
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