{"id":380,"date":"2011-12-06T14:50:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T19:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=380"},"modified":"2011-12-07T09:54:32","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T14:54:32","slug":"home-is-where-the-dance-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/12\/home-is-where-the-dance-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Is Where The Dance Is"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Rennie Harris's Home<\/em>, Matthew Rushing, foreground. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

What do we crave from the thirty dancers who make up the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company? That they be gorgeous, sleek, limber, powerful, virtuosic\u2014sassy when the choreography calls for it, soulful ditto. They do not stint. They can knock dancing into the stratosphere or into our laps. Sometimes they turn the wattage up too high\u2014forgoing subtleties for the highest, the biggest, the baddest, the most heartfelt.<\/p>\n

Last July, when Judith Jamison retired, Robert Battle took over as artistic director of AAADC. A member of David Parsons\u2019s company before starting his own Battleworks Dance Company, he had already set his The Hunt <\/em>on the Ailey men (that and his Takademe<\/em>, along with repertory favorites, will be performed in the AADC\u2019s annual season at City Center, which runs through January 1.) It\u2019s encouraging that the dancers are also mastering pieces that should stretch them in new ways: Paul Taylor\u2019s Arden Court<\/em>, Ohad Naharin\u2019s Minus 16<\/em>, and Home<\/em> by Rennie Harris.<\/p>\n

Home <\/em>premiered on December 1, the night after the company\u2019s opening gala. It came laden with tributes. World AIDS Day is celebrated on December 1, and Ailey died of AIDS on that day twenty-two years ago. Bristol-Myers Squibb sponsored a contest, \u201cFight HIV Your Way,\u201d calling for stories submitted by people living with HIV or affected by it. Supposedly Harris\u2019s work was inspired by these tales, and the ten winners were flown in to see the premiere.<\/p>\n

You will not, however, find any touching stories in Home<\/em>, which is, to my mind, just as well. It can be moving enough to see wonderful-looking, vigorous young people dancing to beat the band\u2014not showing off for us, but making us feel what a challenge and a joyful release dancing can be for those doing it. True, the beginning and the end of Home<\/em> hint at a community and an outsider who is both born from it and returns to it, but Harris doesn\u2019t belabor themes of isolation or difference. His roots and his art\u2014body, mind, and soul\u2014flourish in hip-hop. For Home<\/em>, he (aided by assistant choreographer Nina Flagg) takes steps born on the streets and in clubs and subjects them to formal strategies and variations that make them shine in new ways.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bringing it Home (Alicia Graf Mack, center). Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

The stage fills, empties, and refills with 13 swarming Ailey dancers plus the wonderful Matthew Rushing (returning as a guest artist). They\u2019re wearing hip, bright-colored everyday clothes by Jon Taylor\u2014shirts, tee shirts, pants, jackets, dresses\u2014in various enlightened combinations. The music by DJ-remix artist Dennis Ferrer and multi-talented Raphael Xavier (who used to dance with Rennie Harris Puremovement) sets up the kind of party that gets feet moving. The Aileyites have done their best to adapt to the loose but precise moves that Harris has given them. The space is awash with people hopping low, pedaling one-legged on air, skidding and scuffing their feet in intricate ways; sometimes you could believe they\u2019re dancing on thin ice, their limbs, bodies, and heads in lubricated dissent. There are some cartwheels, as I remember, or dancers diving to take the weight on one hand. No heavy-duty b-boying. No vying with one another for our attention. No facing front all the time. In other words, smart choreography.<\/p>\n

Sometimes everyone\u2019s into his\/her own thing, but often cadres work in counterpoint, intent on their actions. The rhythms are lively: the performers go at it fast and steady, stop dead, whack out some gestures, ooze into a suspended moment and pause before plunging back into heated activity. Instead of legs kicking high, you get pumping knees and hips. The terrific Rushing dances like a complex, well-oiled machine with an abundance of moving parts; he shrugs in and out of steps as if they were much-loved old clothes. Your eye snags on one person, then another. Here\u2019s Hope Boykin in a crazy outfit (orange jumper over yellow blouse and black leggings) bombing into motion, tall Alicia Graf Mack of the sensational long legs forgoing some of her ballerina chops. Antonio Douthit! Michael Jackson, Jr.! All the familiar Ailey dancers looking liberated\u2014trying to hold their own in an unfamiliar club and having a whale of a time doing it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jumping for Rennie: Antonio Douthit and Michael Jackson, Jr. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n

The entire December 1 program had the air of an homage. It opened with ex-Ailey dancer Christopher Huggins\u2019s Anointed <\/em>(new last season), although without program notes, how was everybody supposed to know that the go-for-broke dancing celebrated Ailey (Glenn Allen Sims) passing the torch to Jamison (Linda Celeste Sims) and, after a while, Jamison yielding to Battle (a hopeful looking Daniel Harder)? G.A. Sims lifting his wonderfully expressive wife over and over and over can (with some effort) be construed as Ailey inspiring and elevating Jamison, but, at its choreographic little heart, it\u2019s a virtuosic pas de deux.<\/p>\n

And the closer?\u00a0 What else in the repertory commemorates the Ailey spirit better than his perennially show-stopping Revelations<\/em>? Ailey\u2019s great early works, it and Blues Suite<\/em>, are simple compared with his later pieces and those that other choreographers contribute to the repertory. Over the years, however, Rev<\/em> has become a blockbuster\u2014irresistible in the high-stepping, down-home vigor of \u201cRocka My Soul;\u201d atheists\u2014clapping along, and shouting out\u2014may, for a few minutes, find themselves in Abraham\u2019s bosom, wherever that is, and happy to be there. The purity of this 1960 work remains\u2014to be discovered or ignored by generations of performers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sunday Churchgoers in Ailey's Revelations<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

Certain decorations that creep into Revelations<\/em> affect some of us the way a serious grammatical error does a lover of language. In the opening \u201cI Been \u2019Buked,\u201d there\u2019s a moment when all the dancers burst into different actions within a loose cluster. In the middle of the group, a woman reaches out to a kneeling man, one of her legs stretched behind her in what modern dancers used to call a \u201cback extension\u201d rather than an arabesque. Usually you barely notice this; it\u2019s just one element in a complex image. But when Graf Mack (whom I\u2019m delighted to see back in the company) automatically lifts her leg so high that her skirt slides down and bares her thigh, your eyes inevitably focus on that shapely flag thrust up above the group, practically demanding the pledge of applause.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve complained in the past about subtleties and sincerities that have departed from Revelations<\/em> over the decades. But on the night I saw it last week, Matthew Rushing in \u201cI Wanna Be Ready\u201d lit a slow-burning fire. Deeply felt, honest to the bone, alert to small shifts in the solo\u2019s dynamics of hope and struggle, his performance took me back to Revelation<\/em>\u2019s origins. It was also a great pleasure to see Clifton Brown (another alum returning as a guest artist) in \u201cYou May Run On\u201d and \u201cRocka My Soul.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s not just that he\u2019s a terrific dancer and a great-looking man, but that he appeared utterly at home, unforced, cool to the max\u2014but alive to his friends and to the spirit that moves them all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do we crave from the thirty dancers who make up the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company? That they be gorgeous, sleek, limber, powerful, virtuosic\u2014sassy when the choreography calls for it, soulful ditto. They do not stint. They can knock dancing into the stratosphere or into our laps. Sometimes they turn the wattage up too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[219,222,223,220,221],"class_list":{"0":"post-380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"tag-alvin-ailey","9":"tag-clifton-brown","10":"tag-judith-jamison","11":"tag-matthew-rushing","12":"tag-rennie-harris","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}