The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre have again taken over New York City Center for one month, and, as always, there are world premieres, company premieres, new productions and audience favorites.  On December 5, Camille A. Brown's The Evolution of a Secured Feminie (2007) a solo work that must be danced with feminine mystique, lush technique and tenacity, was beautifully done (as it has been many times before) by Rachel McLaren.  The premiere for the evening was Kyle Araham's Another Night  lead by new comer (2nd year in Ailey after Ailey II), Jacqueline Green and Jamar Roberts.  Yes, absolutely, there was Abraham's signature urban punctuations alongside sleek sentences that show his ability to meld today's style and codified forms, but this production also confirms Abraham's knowledge of music.  Another Night was set to Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia."  Considering that this was the first Abraham on Ailey there were undulations, piercing balances, weaving in and out of groupings, humor, and lots and lots of lush dancing. Looking forward to seeing what Another Night will offer after these Ailey dancers own it for a year.      

December 9th was a bitter sweet evening devoted to saying goodbye to Renee Robinson after 31 years.  How appropriate it was too that it was an evening of Ailey Classics.  Featured Ailey works were Night Creature, Opus McShann, A Song For You, Cry, Love Songs, Hidden Rites and For ‘Bird’ With Love and Ailey's signature masterpiece Revelations.  Robinson, as expected, danced her last dance with such grace and every single time she stepped on the stage there was nothing but roaring applause! For the last time she took the stage as the lady with the umbrella in "Wade In The Water," and although she smiled her Renee smile, we were a bit sad.  Revelations finally ended and the applause seemed to just grow.  Judith Jamison brought white roses from stage left and Robert Battle from stage right, and the curtain went down, but the applause still didn't stop.  Seemingly because it had to be done, the curtain rose one more time, and it was just Renee with both hands, roses and all, raised high.  Good luck going forward! 

      

Seriously, nothing but complete fun.  Clearly Lucy Guerin is one of those choreographers who has integrity for her work and for those who are involved in her work.  In "Untrained" performed by two trained (Alisdair Macindoe and Ross McCormack) and two untrained artists (Michael Dunbar and Jake Shackleton), Gurein offered up an evening of movement, laughter and good theatre.  A white-taped square space stood between two neatly proportioned rows of papers and other "props" on the sides.  The white-taped square is the main performance space.  Yes, of course the expected happened, the "trained" artists showed movement and the "untrained" followed in the best way that they could.  The audience, as is expected, cheers loudly for the "untrained," and so it went.  Gurein throws a fast one at us though when that pattern changes and each of them stop to tell a story about their fears, their relationship with their father, or talk about the experience of working with each other.  "Untrained" was absolutely an evening of solos that introduced each performer in varied ways (brilliant mover, actor, singer or storyteller), each sharing how they put on and take off a T-shirt with point-by-point detail, for instance.  But it was also and evening of true collaboration, the duet between McCormack and Dunbar, for example that began of what they think would be and interesting improvisation - becoming transformers.  That duet was a huge hit, but so was the entire evening. 

To a packed house at NYLA, Tere O'Connor Dance presented two new works Secret Mary (a collaborative work with the dancers) and poem (all O'Connor).  This evening, noted the press release "...constitutes the first two works of a multi-venue project that will collapse three finished dances into a fourth, culminating work in 2013."  The release goes on to talk about how these works represent O'Connor's "...affinity for developing distinctly unrelated strains of material and placing them into complex relational networks."  Ok, I get that.  In Secret Mary (Tess Dworman, devynn emory, Ryan Kelly and Mary Read) seemed more about being apart that making relational networks.  Yes, there were some strains of connections, ellusive pairings here and there, and yes, they were absolutely committed to the loose, undefined, whispy movement, but it was truly difficult to stay with them; to truly be pulled into their world.  Without an intermission, O'Connor bridges the two works with a truly smooth and interesting transition from one work to the other with dancers interacting via smiliar movement, or passing through similar places in space.  That was nice.  poem followed,  performed by Natalie Green, Heather, Olson, Michael Ingle, Oisin Monaghan and Silas Riener, was a bit more believeable, if you will.  Ahhh, maybe it was yet another description from the press release that helped understand that one.  It reads, "...O'Connor re-examins his career long obsession with artifice and formal structures in dance."  Maybe that is what I was looking for, more structured dancing.  This was a delightful piece.

Here's a sincere confession: this time around I really enjoyed what Crystal Pite and her company (Bryan Arias, Eric Beauchesne, Sandra Marin Garcia, Yannick Matthon, Jiri Pokorny, Cindy Salgado and Jermaine Maurice Spivey) shared in what must be called an incredible piece of dance theatre - "The Tempest Replica" (2011) - at The Joyce!  This is Pike's brilliant re-telling of Shakespeare's last play, "The Tempest" and the story of the character Prospero, as Pike puts it, "...a magician and the usurped Duke of Milan."  Her story is filled with revenge, spirit, surrender, reality and community.  The audience enters, and we see Beauchesne diligently folding and placing tiny, paper ships around him, until he finally yells, "Ariel," and Garcia enters.  We later know her as "Spirit," another character who it turns out is indebted to Prospero.  The first section then grows as Pite introduces more characters (Miranda, Caliban, Alonso, Sebastian, Ferdinand and Antonio) connected to Prospero, but presented as white-masked figures against a backdrop with an animated film narrated step-by-step.  What a journey this was.  Not only was the film great, the dancers adoptation of Pite's animated, robot-like movement was indeed captivating.  Take for example, "Ariel's" spirit-like, shape-shifting with every step that would often end with a flickering of her fingers, or towards the end when all the men, as if one, sequentially moved with every move that "Prospero" (the only one not masked) took.  Beause these Pite dancers are such wonderful movers, it was such a pleasure to see them do away with their other personas and return to sweep the stage with their sleek and oh so mature understanding of movement, in real clothes.  Kudos to the entire crew for a wonderful production!

Dance Magazine article - http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/December-2012/The-2012-Dance-Magazine-Awards

Kudos to Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson for continuing with their mission to bring a "...a more culturally interconnected..." group of dancers together. Sunday afternoon's (November 25) program was a very nice first half of duets.  Though it was too short, stand out for the afternoon was Camille A. Brown's very successful  Memories (2012), to live music (improvisation based on “You Taught My heart to Sing” by McCoy Tyner and “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper) performed by Nick Demopoulos. Dressed in jeans, shirts and sneakers, Samantha Figgins and (replaced) shared Brown’s casual yet technical look at taking it easy.  Dwight Rhoden’s Testament, danced beautifully by Natalia Alonso and Tercell Waters, followed.  The last duet, Jae Man Joo’s Flight was danced by two dynamos – Mark Caserta and Norbert De La Cruz III.  Rhoden’s Growth danced by Gary W. Jeter III closed the first half.   The second half was a lively presentation of Rhoden’s Pretty Gritty Suite (2004).  Unquestionably, the dancers of Complexions are beautiful to watch.  Sadly, there was an injury that prevented one dancer not to perform, but as is expected, others quickly filled in to make a great afternoon