Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at Sadler’s Wells

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Three Programs at Sadler’s Wells, September 4-14

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrated 60 years of life last year and the three programs the 33-strong company has brought to Sadler’s Wells in London focus on that celebration. The opening program is about Ailey himself, reflected either in Rennie Harris’s two-act Lazarus or represented in Ailey’s own early signature work, Revelations. Revelations is the ground, both figuratively and biographically, on which Ailey built his choreographic expression; he endowed it with vivid characterisation, joyous vitality and by anchoring it in traditional spirituals created a work that was politically and socially significant for its time. Revelations has rightly become synonymous with Ailey and it has pride of place at the close of each program. While the juxtaposition of Lazarus and Revelations neatly bookends the history of the Ailey company, there is a certain duplication in Harris’s narrative. For him to return to images of the slave trade in the first part is to repeat what Ailey achieved more evocatively through his association with spirituals in Revelations; in the second act, Harris simply substitutes hip hop for Ailey’s jazz rhythms as the contemporary expression of vigorous joy. There is also a distance between the two works that reflects on the treatment of African American culture over the past sixty years; it is the distance between Ailey’s trailblazing efforts to challenge racial discrimination in American society and the company’s current corporate identity. The year before he died, Ailey summed up his vision to dance critic Anna Kisselgoff: “I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that colour is not important.” Sixty years on, the question could well be asked how the company is serving this vision.

The question of legacy is one that any dance company has to face when it loses its founding choreographer, and modes of continuation differ widely. Alongside his own works, Ailey in his lifetime was keen to present the works of other choreographers of any race, so the continuation of a repertory system within the company is consistent with his direction. The problem is how to deal with his own repertoire without his vital intervention. When Merce Cunningham decided controversially not to leave his company to function without him, perhaps he did not to want his works to define him beyond his direct control. While at the time of Ailey’s death in 1989 the decision to protect the company’s legacy in its existing form was wise given the socio-political environment, the further away Ailey’s works are from his rigorous influence the less representative they are of his unique spirit. Perhaps this is why, but for Revelations, the present London repertoire is entirely the work of other choreographers. It’s as if the anniversary celebrations are less about Ailey than about the continuation of the company he created, one that on this showing appears to have swallowed its founder almost without trace.

In the second program, the company presents works by Jessica Lang, Ronald K. Brown, and company artistic director, Robert Battle. Lang’s EN, dressed in white like the Take Me To The Water section of Revelations, is the one work that doesn’t address the company’s inherent culture; it is an abstract work that shows off the company — especially Jacqueline Green and Jacquelin Harris — but is not specific to it. Brown describes his The Call as ‘a love letter to Mr. Ailey’; it reaches back into Ailey’s choreographic influences, is replete with quotes from his work, and ends in the circle of light with which Revelations begins. It falls somewhere between a tribute and a pastiche without managing to reach the heart of its inspiration. Juba, Battle’s first work for the company, was created in the same year as the U.S. invasion of Iraq and arguably reflects that political climate in its frenetic dynamic. Battle calls his quartet a ‘modern day Rite of Spring’ and its folkloric rhythms and angularity derive almost certainly from Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring that presaged uncannily the devastation of the First World War. There is no sacrificial maiden here, however; in this kind of setting we are all victims.

Battle’s other work in London is Ella, a duet for two men that tries to match its choreographic gesture to the voice of Ella Fitzgerald singing Airmail Special. It’s a tall order and succeeds only partially; it’s a party piece that showcases the thrillingly intricate dynamics of its performers (Daniel Harder and Renaldo Maurice) but fails to capture the full range of Fitzgerald’s vocal pyrotechnics. 

Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Ounce of Faith could also be a paean to Ailey in its celebration of the influence of a teacher in a child’s heart. Undoubtedly sincere, the work’s exuberance is mitigated by a superfluous spoken text. Anna Pavlova once remarked that if she could explain something in words she wouldn’t need to dance it. Moultrie’s text is clear but his choreography waffles. Jamar Roberts’ Members Don’t Get Weary is inspired by the recording of two liquid blues numbers by John Coltrane, Dear Lord and Olé. Roberts is a longstanding member of the Ailey company and his body instinctively understands Ailey’s response to music; he seems to arrive at his own choreography from the inside and his dancers relish the opportunity to embody it.   

And so to Revelations. It’s a work you can’t help but appreciate although after seeing it at the end of each program the appreciation gives way to a mildly cloying sense of familiarity. Much has been said of Ailey’s theatricality, his ability to draw an audience into his embrace, but when this emotional effect is pre-empted by a conscious desire to please its authenticity is undermined. For an audience, it’s the difference between being profoundly moved and being entertained.