Choreography by Twyla Tharp, Kyle Abraham and Alvin Ailey
Divided over two programmes, American Dance Theater producers Alvin Ailey turns the Festival Theatre into their troupe’s home through the final week of the International Festival, carrying with them the distinct hallmark of exemplary quality they carry with an emphasis on the Afro-American women weaved into their stories, their movements and dance, carried through into the entire nature of the performance.
A line of nine dancers on this grand stage, commanding the entire space without occupying it, beating beneath their rust-toned tops, a collective roaring hearts of jazz channel into the precision and grace of ballet. Twyla Tharp’s choreography is sharp and intense, with a more urban element to bebop in the kicks, entirely fluid in their movement with just enough rigidity to hold their syrupy movements from spilling over as the casual air is graced with American jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge’s sultry tones. And this is only the first part, Roy’s Joys, of the three-part programme of night one.
The newest addition to the programme (and a UK premiere) is Kyle Abraham’s Are You In Your Feelings? marches us into the contemporary celebration of culture and music, and a vivaciously infectious lustre of life. Making tremendous use of the lighting for the venue, cycling between the passionate but often cooler tones of pinks, blues, and purples, it often drowns the twelve dancers in a radiant shimmer as we divulge the intense intimacy of relationships, and the relationship between two of the sexes. But do not for a second expect any form of binary movement of melding for the piece, boundaries are merely an initial drive to generate tension before the movement descends into a gloriously lyrical, voluptuous, fluid, and fantastical admittance that despite irritations and grievances, we struggle to live without one another. It’s a ‘lived’ form of choreography, like the other two in the programme and incorporates the interaction with one another and spaces, set to the house tunes of R&B and soul, which have a significant impact on the movement.
We come to a euphorically transcendent finale with Revelations which, even after all these years, manages to puncture through the divide of the spiritual to present everyone on an even field: believer and cynic alike. Wavering into partner’s arms, falling, almost dripping into one another, set to the always powerful melodies of Fix Me, Jesus and Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham which, regardless of belief, nullify the plain of existence we sit upon, catapulting the audience to the holiest of lands, to streams of water under the beating blaze of the sun above. All carried in the elongated and powerful movements of the dancers who leap in a stimulating set of performances.
The reverence of the final piece ebbs away, but the thumping and pulsating rhythm of movement and full-coursing veins takes longer for audiences to settle away from the strict and timeless choreography. Alvin Ailey’s first programme at the festival is nothing short of a triumph, so let’s see if the second programme can match the majesty of the first.
