Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. - Lincoln Center Festival 96: New York State Theater, New York, NY - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1996 by Gus Solomons, Jr.

REVIEWED BY GUS SOLOMONS JR

Artistic director Judith Jamison could hardly have chosen a more audiencefriendly program for her company's Lincoln Center Festival performances at the State Theater. Her new collaboration with composer-celebrity-African American cultural icon Wynton Marsalis, framed by two Ailey war-horses--The River, made in 1970 for American Ballet Theatre, and the perennial Revelations 1960)--scored a crowd-pleasing bull's-eye. But it raises questions about the artistic obligation of one of our premier contemporary dance institutions to expand and deepen the cultural vision of its audience.

Increasingly, since Ailey's death in 1989, the ethos of the company has as much to do with the height of dancers' extensions as with their vibrant embodlment of the spiritual passion of African American culture. Jamison has proved her knack for choosing amazing dancers, but their obsession with athleticism has all but obscured subtler values. At the Sunday matinee The River was stylistically at odds with its classic vocabular,v. The movement combines Ailey's jazzy vernacular with classical ballet steps, but, off pointe, it lacks the technical finesse that made the original risky and exhilarating. Of the men, only Matthew Rushing pulls off the complex turns and double tours with the control they require; the others simply muscle through with hit-or-miss results, and the corps is rhythmically ragged. The women fare better. Lithe Mucuy Bolles is appropriately mercurial as Rushing's partner in the "Giggling Rapids" duet, and Elizabeth Roxas combines regal style and dynamic phrasing in the opening of the final section, "Twin Cities."

An intermission warm-up by Marsalis and the members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra primed the audiences enthusiasm for the premiere, Sweet Release, which weds his flamboyant music with Jamison's dance. The raucous, highly accessible jazz score--which all but upstages his.collaborator's efforts--gives the musicians a chance to stretch new kinds of expressive squeals, and gurgles from their instruments, within a decorous rhythmic and stuctural context. Jamison's choreography embraces the foot-stomping lilt of the music, revisiting timeworn black themes: sexy duet, funky dance party, fight scene.

Karine Plantadit-Bageot's sexual writhing on a chaise longue, downstage, and the gymnastic muscle-flexing of her maie counterpart Uri Sands on and around his chaise, upstage, precedes their consummation, when the drapes separating them disappear. The scene shifts to Church for a twentieth-anniversary renewal of wedding vows by minister Don Bellamy for celebrants Nasha Thomas and Leonard Meek, while Rushing as "Snake in the Grass" tries to corrupt their fidelity. The ensuing Church Basement party gives the congregation--dressed in Greg Barnes's blindinghot orange, yellow, and fuchsia clothes--a chance to boogie and strut to a salsa beat. Next, the Street provides a venue for the obligatory scrapping, where the Snake gets his comeuppance at the hands of the leaping, punching good guys, while the ladies flit around, rewing up hysteria.

Finally, since the connection between the first couple and the rest of the dance seems tenuous at best, Jamison attempts to tie narrative loose ends together by returning to the young lovers--their passion slightly cooled--as the congregation parades in the background. The surprising thing about the choreography is how totally predictable it is. Perhaps living with emotional and kinetic cliches on a daily basis has dulled the troupe's sensitivity to them. It's high time this world-class company took its prestigious position seriously, shed the complacency that allows its sensational dancers to perform superficially, and presented its audience with a more artistically challenging repertoire.