How Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Uplifted Spirits at Zellerbach Hall
By Larissa Archer
The last time I saw Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was thirteen years ago, also at Zellerbach Hall. Obama was president and would win a second term later that year. I remember a slightly more diverse crowd in race and age, and definitely a louder one.
In the triple bill of Hip Hop artist Rennie Harris’s “Home,” Ohad Naharin’s “Minus 16,” and Ailey’s chef d’oeuvre “Revelations,” the performances seemed more like a lively conversation the whole theater took part in, with a few of the participants speaking through movement, and everyone else, in whistles, hoots, emphatic claps, and exclamations shouted from all areas of the theater.
Tuesday night’s opening triple bill of Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace,” Jamar Roberts’ “Al-Andalus Blues,” and “Revelations” saw a quieter, older, and less diverse, but apparently no less rapt, audience. Trump is president and such a company in America, one that celebrates blackness and portrays the black experience, composed primarily of black artists, founded by a black, gay artist who died of AIDS, has always been radical, and now, its existence defies the tired, entrenched, mediocre vision for the country this kakistocracy is pushing.
The company’s first world tour was sponsored by the US State Department, and it was an early recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The idea of the state supporting an organization whose entire history and mission statement now likely falls in the federal government’s ‘banned words” list seems like a lost dream of a fallen civilization.
But Ailey has not been stifled yet. “Grace” featured a range of depictions of the word, from a romantic, ethereal solo, to earthy, pelvis-heavy club-style group dancing. “Al-Andalus Blues” took Miles Davis’s iconic Sketches of Spain (re-envisioned from Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”) and put dancers in uniform costumes with vaguely militaristic silhouettes and movements often more geometric and staccato than the sweepingly romantic score evinced.
The real event of the evening was, is always, “Revelations.” Like any masterpiece, it unfolds and reveals new and different treasures upon every viewing. When I was in my twenties, in New York, my most vivid memory from the City Center performance was the majestic optimism of “Wade in the Water,” the theatricality of the water effect created by the billowing blue silks, the gentle, feminine rolling movement of the mens’ hips as they strode across the stage: more economic than a swagger, gentler than a march, and I remember the unbounded hope embodied in the central character’s breast, arm, and umbrella stretched heavenward.
I had not yet taken a Horton class, the movement genre from which Ailey derived much of his choreographic style, and had no idea what degree of core strength “Pilgrim of Sorrow”’s wide, firm-planted squats and solid outstretched torso angles took. By now, the physical labor of it translates more clearly into a metaphoric language, and the tightly-gathered murmuration-like patterns the ensemble made, dressed and lit in the colors of honey, conveyed the beauty of community, in sharing pain and hardship, in supporting each other and attempting to rise.
It was the first time I had noticed how much the cluster of outstretched palms against the black background resembled the earliest cave stencils, the same visual motifs depicting our experiences regardless of the place, culture, year, century, or epoch. By the third movement, “Fix Me, Jesus,”’s pas de deux, those angles softened and seemed to express the same struggles, but from a more personal vantage, with the added intimacy of romantic love (maybe?) and partnership enriching the theme. The exhilarating conclusion to the evening, “Move, Members, Move” is hard to top: there’s the conversational fluttering of handheld fans (another motif that has continued to evolve: echoed in drag queens’ “thworp” gag, the fans are used to indicate an emphatic conclusion to a “read” or a sudden concealment of one’s face, a particularly ostentatious way to seek privacy).
There’s the bouncing, laughter-like motion the men make with their hands on their hips–why is it so delightful and funny? Yet even then the audience, which I remember loudly clapping along with the steady rhythm of “Rocka-My Soul” the other times I’ve seen “Revelations,” seemed shy about joining in, even when the dancers themselves led by example. Maybe whiter audiences are a bit more private about what moves them; or maybe the audience hesitated to give themselves over to the untrammeled, improbable joy the piece generates, given the political climate, and with such disastrous news for the arts so fresh.
Nevertheless it was evident that everyone there knew we had witnessed something thrilling and precious. The ovation was long and standing; the conversations on the way out of the theater fluid and earnest between different clusters of attendees. Zellerbach Hall is the second most frequent and longest running location for the Ailey company’s performances outside of their home theater in New York– they have toured to Berkeley every non-pandemic year since 1968. To me, at least, that that is even still possible is reason enough to celebrate.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Alicia Graf Mack, artistic director
Matthew Rushing, associate artistic director
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