trailerpilot

I’ve seen better Ailey shows than Thursday’s at the Auditorium, but they probably deserve a little slack. The company, already famous for going all-out, has yanked every stop for their 50th anniversary, evidenced by the far-too-long, way-too-self-congratulatory film they showed as a preamble to each program.  These dancers are obviously being put through the wringer, hitting an obscene number of international and U.S. cities as part of a high-profile celebration that began over a year ago.  They must be exhausted.  I’m glad I chose the all-Ailey retrospective montage program over the newer work they brought for Wednesday’s and the weekend’s shows, which I did partially due to lukewarm reviews for the two big premieres but mostly because the anniversary program’s selections were sourced from fourteen dances by Alvin Ailey, dating from between 1958 and 1988 (they were also presented in chronological order).  I figured a lot of it was going to go into storage at least until the 75th, and with obscure repertory being as unpopular as it is these days—programming approached as curation is most definitely out—I needed to see these pieces while I could.

Linda Celeste Sims. Photo by Andrew Eccles.

For example, it’s hard to believe something like the men’s duet excerpted from 1970’s Streams would appear under any other circumstances:  Clad only in periwinkle tights, Clifton Brown and Matthew Rushing performed a wickedly difficult, severe invention to music by Miloslav Kabelac that could only be Nixon (and Béjart, and MacMillan, and Cranko) Era experimentalism.  I have a soft spot for the stuff:  Some…okay, a lot, of the dance field’s acceptance of oddball formalism has been swept under the rug of mandatory beauty and preferences for predictability over the crapshoot of risk, but in pieces like Streams you really see how much big choreographers once felt supported in making unabashedly arcane investigations.  The irony is, of course, that big choreographers remain coddled no matter their choices—I’m looking at you, Wheeldon—but for whatever reasons the field as a whole has slowly, firmly trended away from an atmosphere of intellectualism and toward a paradigm of the mainstream hit.  (I’d personally rather be outraged than bored, but no one’s asking for my opinion on such matters.) Read More…