Ailey Women Find Bond in `Love' - Renee Robinson and Carmen de Lavallade expand "Sweet Bitter Love" for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Karyn D. Collins

IN THE ALVIN AILEY COMPANY, with its rich legacy of strong women, Carmen de Lavallade and Renee Robinson by any measure are standouts. Now de Lavallade, 69, a member of the original company, has created a work that will showcase Robinson, who joined the troupe in 1981.

Sweet Bitter Love, expanded from a 1985 solo de Lavallade created for herself, is now a duet--a sensual exploration of a love affair gone sour that features Robinson and Glenn A. Sims. Set to ballads by Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, the work premieres during the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's City Center season, November 29 to December 31. Other highlights of the season are world premieres by Alonzo King and former company member Dwight Rhoden.

"It's a little one-act play. It's a story about a love affair. I thought about the old movie Brief Encounter, where two people, a couple, are attached to other people," de Lavallade says, referring to the 1946 British film starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, remade in 1974 with Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. "They're very nice people, but they have to break it up and it's very hard to do those things. The solo was from the woman's viewpoint--her hurt and anger. By adding the other person, it tells the story from both viewpoints."

Alvin Ailey first saw de Lavallade dance when they were classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles. In 1947, he followed her to class at Lester Horton's Hollywood studio, and, Jennifer Dunning wrote in her biography, Alvin Ailey, A Life in Dance, watched for six months before getting up the nerve to actually take class. At Horton, de Lavallade thrilled Ailey with her artistry as well as her gifts as a teacher, particularly when she, along with James Truitte and Ailey, became part of the core group that made it possible for Lester Horton's company and technique to continue following his sudden death in 1953. Her performances, from Horton's company to Ailey's (where she was an original member) and continuing as a freelance dancer and actress today, have inspired several generations of dancers.

De Lavallade, who, like Ailey, danced in the movie Carmen Jones and on Broadway in House of Flowers, toured the Far East with Ailey. She appeared as a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre and seems the person for whom the words "living legend" were invented.

In Robinson, de Lavallade says she sees a dancer whose "maturity and inner involvement with whatever she is performing" connect with her own sense of artistry. "I like her care of detail in her work and how she combines the physical with the internal workings of a piece," says de Lavallade of Robinson. "She is never satisfied and keeps searching so her performances get richer and richer."

Robinson, early in her career, was lauded as one of the Ailey company's technical powerhouses whose sophisticated style and physical beauty matched her beautiful line, honed through years of training at the Jones-Haywood School in her native Washington, D.C. In recent years, she's taken on a new mantle, that of the soulful earth mother. Today, the technique is married with a sense of maturity in a variety of roles--from the proud woman of Ailey's Cry to the powerful high priestess of Ron K. Brown's premiere from last season, Grace.

Now marking her eighteenth season with the Ailey company, Robinson is revered within company circles as a mentor. Her presence onstage and off has been a motivational force for newer members of the company.

De Lavallade's new work in the City Center season is an occasion of special significance for the Ailey family. She is dance royalty--a cousin of the legendary Janet Collins (the first black prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet) and the wife of actor/director/choreographer/designer Geoffrey Holder.

Ailey often described de Lavallade as his muse. Her presence was a vital part of the Ailey company during its early days. The company even toured under the name De Lavallade/Ailey Company when traveling in Southeast Asia in the early '60s. "I still place her on a pedestal and admire her greatly," says Judith Jamison, Ailey superstar-turned-artistic director. "I have so much respect for what she's done as a dancer and in theater. Quietly and elegantly, she has made a statement about how exciting and special dance can be." Indeed, de Lavallade continues to perform as a dance soloist and in the theater. (She was a lead actress at Yale Repertory Theater for many years.) Most recently she starred in Debbie Allen's musical Soul Possessed, staged last year in Washington, D.C., and earlier this fall in Atlanta, Georgia. She also appears occasionally as part of Paradigm, a new trio of older dancers with Dance Magazine contributor Gus Solomons jr and Dudley Williams, who has performed with the Ailey company since 1964. In 1966, de Lavallade won the Dance Magazine Award for the sensual and soulful beauty of her dancing. Her continued artistry in dance was recognized this year with a New York Dance and Performance Award, or Bessie.