A shaman casts a spell in "From Before," the legendary dance by choroegapher Garth Fagan, which Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has revived this season at NY City Center.
A Saturday matinee at Ailey is a marvelous mix of kids and adults in holiday finery and some of the best dancers on the planet going all out to give their guests a good time.
Jiri Kylian's "Petite Mort" is predictably a dance of duets. It takes two, as they say in another sexual euphemism, to tango. But before the six couples here reach their stylized climaxes, their entwined limbs alternately thrusting and splaying, the audience sees the men alone, moving in tandem with sinuous fencing foils: foreplay with props.
When Judith Jamison retired in 2010 from what had become, under her two-decade leaderhsip, one of the most popular danc ecompanies in the world, some of us had already devised a wish list for her successor: what to keep and what to change.
On Wednesday afternoon, choreographer Kyle Abraham, finalizing his look for a curtain call, rips out the price tags from the wide-leg tuxedo pants and the white shirt emblazoned with a large blurred yellow flower he's chosen from Comme des Garcons.
Improvisational jazz is not exactly a choreographer's best friend. If the musicians can change up tempos and tunes, dancers can do their best to chuck their assigned steps and wing it.
When Robert Battle took over as the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last year, it was the equivalent of being given the helm of a luxury cruise ship. In the scrappy modern-dance world most directors are still in paddle boats.
This month Renee Robinson will make her last signature entrance as the "woman with the umbrella" in Alvin Ailey's Revelations.
Kyle Abraham's plate is more than full: His new work for AIley opens Dec. 5, his latest piece for his company Abraham.in.Motion premiered Nov. 1, and he's getting started on a duet for the 2013 Wendy Whelan Project.