The story at Alvin Ailey is always the same: the dancers. But having been away during the opening weeks of the company’s annual City Center lovefest, just ended, I have a new take on them. Seeing a number of second- and third-cast performances, I was more exposed than critics usually are to the company’s depth Read More
Forget that great tree at Rockefeller Center: We dance-lovers know it must be Christmas because Alvin Ailey’s at the City Center and The Nutcracker’s at the State. Year in, year out, they anchor New York’s end-of-year dance experience. This year, though, Ailey is hoping to confound our expectations (terrific dancers, unterrific repertoire) at least a Read More
You didn’t need a crystal ball to guess that the annual five-week Alvin Ailey season at the City Center would be greeted with rapture by its full-house audiences and restrained enthusiasm by the critics. The message is the same, year in, year out: great dancing, inferior repertory. And in that regard, nothing has changed.
There Read More
You didn’t need a crystal ball to guess that the annual five-week Alvin Ailey season at the City Center would be greeted with rapture by its full-house audiences and restrained enthusiasm by the critics. The message is the same, year in, year out: great dancing, inferior repertory. And in that regard, nothing has changed.
There Read More
Santa’s on his way, and that means the Alvin Ailey crew have checked in at the City Center for their annual five-week rave-up. And that means 20-odd performances of the company’s bread-and-butter piece, Revelations, which the audience starts applauding even before anything’s happened. Luckily, things then do happen, and when they go right, Revelations, however Read More
When December comes, can The Nutcracker be far behind? No, it can’t-not in America, anyway. And certainly not at the State Theater, where Balanchine’s wonderful version is happily in residence until Jan. 4. But how does a critic justify returning to it again and again-that is, a critic whose children are too old for it Read More
Another December, another Alvin Ailey season. How many ways can a guy find to say the same thing yet another time: terrific dancing, stunted repertory. The success of the Ailey company is one of the great ongoing stories in American dance. What explains it? A major part of the answer certainly lies in the company’s Read More
We have no more successful dance company today than the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and after the first 10 days of their current five-week season at the City Center, it’s easy to see why: Under the brilliant leadership of Judith Jamison, Ailey gives us ethnic and spiritual subject matter, a canny mixture of musical Read More
