![\"Alvin](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AJ-train-141210_Alvin_Ailey_005.jpg\")
<\/a>Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Matthew Rushing’s Odetta<\/em>. (L to R): Michael Francis McBride, Belen Pereyra, Marcus Jarrell Willis, Renaldo Maurice, Rachael McLaren, Sarah Daley, Danica Paulos, Jermaine Terry, Megan Jakel, Kanji Segawa, and Hope Boykin. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n The members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have always been able to do practically anything a choreographer might ask of them: thrust their legs astonishingly high, spin like tops, act sassy or sexy, and dance with an ardor that burns across the footlights. But it\u2019s always exciting to see how they accommodate to the new challenges that being in a repertory company entails. And Robert Battle, who succeeded Judith Jamison as AAADT\u2019s artistic director in 2011, has continue and expanded the tradition of giving them those challenges.<\/p>\n So, over two nights early in the company\u2019s City Center season (through January 4), you could see them give their passionate all in Ailey\u2019s iconic Revelations <\/em>(1960) and Robert Moses\u2019s The Pleasure of the Lesson<\/em> (2014) with its semi-tribal atmosphere and dizzying lighting effects. But you could also see twenty of them dressed in black pants, white shirts, open black jackets, and black hats (the women have their hair slicked back or pinned up to minimize the gender gap). And in this dance, Ohad Naharin\u2019s Minus 16<\/em> (acquired by AAADT in 2011), they may perform the same sequence many times, as crisply as soldiers, but also go out into the audience and prowl the aisles, each looking for a new partner to escort onto the stage, in order that the company members can dance for and with them. Samuel Lee Roberts begins the work, improvising alone with wonderful wit and crazed bursts of pleasure while the intermission that precedes Minus 16 <\/em>is still winding down.<\/p>\n The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik.<\/p><\/div>\n Naharin, the director of Israel\u2019s Batsheva Dance Company, drew from five of his works to create Minus 16. <\/em>Made in 1999, it celebrated his wife, the beautiful dancer Mari Kajiwara, who was to die of cancer in 2001. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, two other works memorialized artists. Ailey choreographed his Memoria<\/em> in 1979, the year choreographer Joyce Trisler\u2014 a former colleague of his in the Lester Horton Company, and a member of AAADT for a while during the 1960s\u2014died unexpectedly. The title of Odetta<\/em>, by Matthew Rushing (former company dancer, now a rehearsal director and guest artist) is self-explanatory; Rushing\u2019s world premiere celebrates the many voices of this tremendous singer, song-writer, and political activist. Blues, folk, spirituals, jazz\u2014she knew them all.<\/p>\n Given the date of Memoria\u2019s <\/em>premiere, Ailey must have created the piece while mourning Trisler, whom he loved, admired, and fought with. The dancers are clad in white and move to Keith Jarrett\u2019s \u201cRunes\u201d and \u201cSolara March\u201d\u2014music that blends treacle and transcendence. In the cast I saw, Linda Celeste Sims embodied Trisler, saluted and elevated by the others, but also performing as if on an emotional search of her own, sometimes she\u2019s supported by two men who could represent Horton and Ailey. The beginning is a knockout, with men rushing in and out, bearing their partners high; the image is like spurting fountains. And Ailey was adept at creating telling and variegated patterns in space. Many of the steps are rooted in Horton class work or in Trisler\u2019s own fine solo, Journey<\/em>, although after a while, so many legs kicked high to the side so many times begin to look like a display of weaponry. It was a fine theatrical touch on Ailey\u2019s part to weave lines of students from the Ailey School through the ensemble\u2014first in white and then in rainbow colors.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what Trisler would have made of this. A prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of Doris Humphrey\u2019s, a fascinating and unusual dancer, and a gifted choreographer, she was also tart and dry and witty (I danced in her company for a couple of years). For sure, she would have been happy that Ailey offered her this tribute.<\/p>\n Hope Boykin leads Matthew Rushing’s Odetta<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Rushing\u2019s homage to Odetta takes a different form, and her voice dominates the eponymous piece\u2014essentially a suite of danced songs of all kinds, most of them recorded by Odetta, with Harry Belafonte joining her on \u201cA Hole in the Bucket\u201d and her \u201cFreedom Trilogy\u201d sung by Ysaye M. Barnwell, with Seth Farber on piano. The terrific Hope Boykin\u2014wearing a swirling, mostly red dress by Dante Baylor that makes her look like a carnival on the move\u2014functions as an embodiment of the great singer. Her movements assert power and hope, but she supports or consoles the others as well as mustering them. And Rushing has rendered those ten others as members of a community who watch and listen, as well as the individuals who dance the songs.<\/p>\n Projected images of Odetta appear; we hear her words, culled from speeches she made or interview questions she answered\u2014speaking out for racial equality and against the war in Vietnam. One of the most creative aspects of Rushing\u2019s work is George Travis\u2019s set and the uses made of it. A number of long, slim, adroitly designed \u201cbenches\u201d that appear to be made of blonde wood are carried about and rearranged by the dancers to fit the tone of the songs. (I enclose benches in quotes because they are also sometimes stood on end to suggest buildings or pushed together to become a single platform or set end-to-end in two lines to suggest railroad tracks.)<\/p>\n Rushing hasn\u2019t been choreographing for very long (this is only his fourth work), and Odetta <\/em>is definitely an impressive achievement. As you might expect, he occasionally uses steps that might have dropped in from other dances in the repertory, but more often he intuits what suits a particular song and makes the dancers\u2019 bodies express that. So in \u201cJohn Henry,\u201d Renaldo Maurice seems really to be working himself to death with his big, flailing movements, and Kanji Segawa makes himself look small\u2014huddled against adversity, and stumbling a little when Odetta sings \u201cSometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.\u201d Megan Jakel whips herself into a frenzy of exaltation to \u201cGlory, Glory,\u201d and during \u201cCool Water,\u201d Sarah Daley and Jermaine Terry cling together as if marooned and resisting being pulled apart by tides. Belen Pereyra takes the stage with fierce dignity during \u201cOx Driver Song.\u201d<\/p>\n Rachael McLaren and Marcus Jarrell Willis in Matthew Rushing’s Odetta<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n For the familiar, jokey, snake-eating-its-tale folk song, \u201cThere\u2019s a Hole in the Bucket,\u201d Rushing wisely decided to calm the stage down and illustrate the song with precise and very telling gestures. Odetta and Belafonte (who was in the audience the night Odetta <\/em>premiered) let their voices start out relatively calmly and then become more exasperated (she) and more helplessly dopey (he). Rushing reflects the increasing tensions in their interchanges, and Rachel McLaren and Marcus Jarrell Willis perform wonderfully\u2014she composed and tight-lipped, curt in her gestures, he loose and shrugging. They sit on two side by side on stools and, much of the time, look straight at the audience, a vaudeville duo making every gesture count.<\/p>\n Odetta sings Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cMasters of War\u201d to usher in \u201cGlory, Glory\u201d and the \u201cFreedom Trilogy.\u201d The fact that an American flag descends and hangs, half-hidden, behind the performers makes an obvious link between the war in Vietnam and today\u2019s interventions in the Middle East. Michael Francis McBride and Danica Paulos are the lovers about to be separated by his military service. But what\u2019s most moving is the way Rushing organizes the ensemble in this section. To \u201cMasters of War,\u201d the men march and march in repeated diagonal processions that progress in the same direction. Bit by bit, they change their appearance as they make their tight, thrusting, gestures and take their insistent rhythmic steps. They appear without their shirts, then acquire helmets, next time march with bandoliers strung across one shoulder. Between their appearances, the women rush onstage to interpolate their reactions. McBride gets his helmet, leaves his girl, and joins the marching line. Flashing lights and hurtling, thrashing bodies ensue. I didn\u2019t expect to be so moved. By the music and how Rushing and the dancers allowed it<\/em> to recruit them.<\/p>\n A few passages in Odetta<\/em> are opaque. What, for instance, is the connection between Boykin and Jakel, who dance together like sisters or alter egos? Does it matter, in this case, that Jakel is white and Boyd black, signifying a hoped-for end to prejudice? Or. . . ?<\/p>\n Ulysses Dove’s Bad Blood<\/em> (December 5th cast, L to R): Jacqueline Harris, Samantha Figgins, Jamar Roberts, Kirven Douthit-Boyd, Antonio Douthit-Boyd, Linda Celeste Sims, and Michael Francis McBride. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n There\u2019s nothing unclear visually about Ulysses Dove\u2019s 1984 Bad Blood<\/em> (a new production of a work acquired by AAADT in 1986). The subject is dance and relationships. Everything is pristine. And fierce. The seven dancers wear white practice clothes in varying designs (costumes by Carol Vollet Garner), and Beverly Emmons\u2019s white lighting gives the stage the look of a cloudless day. A long bench at the back makes a variety of spatial designs possible (a powerful duet for Rachel McLaren and Yannick Lebrun happens mostly on and around the bench). Double or triple lengths of white rope form an X on the backcloth.<\/p>\n The music, however, is another matter. Not simple and clear at all. Two arresting works by Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel (\u201cExcellent Birds\u201d and \u201cGravity\u2019s Rainbow\u201d) and one by Anderson alone (\u201cWalking and Falling\u201d) surround the dance the way the noise of city streets\u2014voices, traffic, sirens\u2014 surround a room in an apartment, or an intimate moment occurs amid a swarm of pedestrians. Anderson\u2019s voice lives amid this, although City Center\u2019s sound system ill serves her spoken scenario, which I know to be interesting. I catch only words and phrases now and then: \u201c. . .falling and catching yourself from falling. . . ,\u201d \u201c. . .really think about ham and cheese sandwiches. . . ,\u201d \u201c. . .evil.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>