Alvin Ailey's "Revelations" Wows Chrysler Hall Audience

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's performances this spring commemorate the 50 years that have past since a group of young black modern dancers first performed in New York City under Ailey's tutelage.  Ailey died in 1989, leaving the company in the hands of former principal dancer Judith Jamison.

 Jamison shares Ailey's company vision, including advocating for the arts in public education.  She has also implemented a multi-cultural curriculum.  Ailey told the African American story through dance choreography while showing audiences that the African American experience is also a universal experience. 

The company's repertoire now includes some 200 works by 70 choreographers.  The dancers demonstrated the breadth of their abilities over the weekend, performing two distinct programs in three performances. 

Program A, staged Friday night and Sunday afternoon, featured Maurice Bejart's contemporary classic "Firebird," and changed tones in a second act titled "The Golden Section" set to music by rocker David Byrne. 

Saturday night's program opened with jazz-themed "The Winter in Lisbon," featuring the music of Dizzy Gillespie and choreographed by Billy Wilson.  The second piece, Talley Beatty's "The Road of the Phoebe Snow," was distinctly modern in its abstract exploration of incidents believed to have occurred on the Phoebe Snow railway in the Midwestern United States.

Both programs closed with Ailey's signature piece, "Revelations."  Saturday night's audience was most appreciative of this staging of the gospel-influenced trademark drawing on Ailey's youth in Texas.   

The three-part piece is composed of 10 dances, featuring various members of the company.  Guillermo Asca, who has also danced with Ballet Metropolitano de Caracas and Ballet Hispanico, displayed incredible strength and emotion in "I Wanna Be Ready," the only solo component of "Revelations".  

The use of color, magnified by the stage lighting and costumes, as well as the sheer joy in movement expressed by the dancers, stimulated the audience's visual senses.  With the exception of a fabric river and a bright orange sun backdrop in "Revelations," the three-act performance used no stage props.  The dancers relied on their own bodies to communicate the dramatic material.

One captivated woman walking out of Chrysler Hall said she was unable to find a suitable adjective to describe the performance she had just seen.

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