![\"Alvin](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AJ-Battle-kneel-AAADT-in-Robert-Battles-Awakening-Photo-by-Paul-Kolnik.jpg\")
<\/a>Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Robert Battle’s Awakening.<\/em> Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n During the curtain call at City Center that followed the world premiere of Robert Battle\u2019s Awakening<\/em>, the twelve members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater joined the audience in clapping enthusiastically for him. Sweaty, their faces alight, their hands slamming together, they showed their support and their affection. This was the first new dance made for the AAADT by its artistic director.<\/p>\n Since Battle took that position four years ago, he has shown that he understands both what’s best to preserve of the company\u2019s heritage and what new blood to bring in. He\u2019s challenging the dancers\u2014among the world\u2019s best\u2014as well as broadening the audience\u2019s perception of the company. This season, among the two dozen dances on view, there are additional world premieres\u2014by Kyle Abraham and Ronald K. Brown, choreographers who\u2019ve created pieces to the repertory before, plus Paul Taylor\u2019s Piazzola Caldera <\/em>and a new production of Ailey\u2019s 1958 Blues Suite<\/em> (a dance that appeared at the very first performance at the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y of Ailey\u2019s then small pick-up group). Rennie Harris\u2019s Exodus<\/em>, which premiered during the June season, is also on the schedule.<\/p>\n Robert Battle’s Awakening<\/em>. (L to R): Samuel Lee Roberts, Elisa Clark, Jacquelin Harris (in front), Demetia Hopkins-Greene, Yannick Lebrun, Rachael McLaren, Belen Pereyra, Daniel Harder, Jacqueline Green (in front), Kanji Segawa, Michael Francis McBride. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n Awakening<\/em> begins promisingly. Excitingly. In darkness streaked with light, individual dancers race past in various directions. All eighteen are dressed identically (by Jon Taylor) in white pants and tops. The first selection of music is a recording of John Mackey\u2019s 2007 Turning<\/em>. Written for a wind orchestra plus percussion, it\u2019s cataclysmic: screaming brasses, crashing melees followed by abrupt silences. The running dancers gradually fall into contrapuntal patterns, some of which evoke veering around city corners and following narrow streets; a line of several dancers may run onto the stage and almost immediately twist to run off it, their feet actually skidding a bit as they make the turn. Amid the music\u2019s blare and clamor, they finally (and briefly) form a line that stretches from the front to the back along a side edge of the stage.<\/p>\n But chaos is always threatening, even though some of the passages are repeated intermittently. A couple of times, for instance, the dancers, form a clump and look upward, as if for a sign; they start to unwind the cluster, only to break away\u2014thrusting, running, spinning. Sometimes they rise from their knees leaving a single dancer briefly prone. Sometimes they flutter or shake as if the earth under their feet were punishing them. One man (Jamar Roberts) proves to be a leader of some kind.<\/p>\n Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Robert Battle’s Awakening<\/em>, Jamar Roberts center. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThe Attention of Souls,\u201d the third movement of Makey\u2019s Wine-Dark Sea: Symphony for Band<\/em> (2014) succeeds Turning<\/em>, and it is lighter in tone (although still fierce); the higher wind instruments, almost perky, argue with deeper more dissonant voices, and, in the end, what might be a sweet melody is buried by a climactic explosion, out of which only a few quiet tones survive. Lighting designer Al Crawford has created a backdrop in which rows of tiny white points of light appear, multiply, diminish, reconfigure, and flash, perhaps to convey an atmosphere that I can\u2019t fathom. Once, dimmer irregular ones appear at the top, suggesting something akin to a night sky.<\/p>\n Battle eschews literal drama in favor of telling structures, and he deploys his marvelous, driven cast skillfully in small groups and tumultuous ensembles. I missed getting a gradual sense of the awakening that the title encapsulates, a transition from chaos and uncertainty to. . .what? I\u2019m not sure. (At the end of Awakening<\/em>, Roberts has collapsed and crawled toward a corner; the others circle him, reach toward him.) Perhaps as the work develops through performance, Battle and the dancers will clarify its journey of shifting moods and qualities.<\/p>\n Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims in the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s After The Rain<\/em>. Photo: Paul Kolnik<\/p><\/div>\n Battle has brought into the AAADT pieces made for other companies and dancers. One of these, programmed the night Awakening <\/em>debuted, was the beautiful duet from Christopher Wheeldon\u2019s, After the Rain<\/em>, which was created in 2005 for Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto. The ethereality of the music, Arvo P\u00e4rt\u2019s Spiegel im Spiegel<\/em>, corresponded to Whelan\u2019s lightness and simplicity. Soto seemed to be trying to hold an innocent spirit. Subsequent casts naturally bring their own personas to it. Among the Ailey couples, Linda Celeste Sims, beautiful and devoted as she is, makes the woman\u2019s role earthier and more dramatic; this is in part because she uses her extraordinarily flexible spine to arch further into many of the movements. So the duet looks somehow more effortful, despite the attentiveness and simpler demeanor of her excellent partner-husband, Glenn Allen Sims.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>