Alvin Ailey troupe headed to Hanover Theatre

Ocimnet - Tomorrow night's performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts will mark some important steps in the history of the famous company.

The experience may well prove revelatory for the audience, but that doesn't mean the 30 dancers expect to be received with contemplative, complimentary silence. “Feel free to make noise any time you want to,” advised Ailey's artistic director Judith Jamison. “Our audiences have always been spontaneous. You can feel free to do that at an Ailey performance. It's our prerogative for you.”

The dance company is currently undertaking a tour of 24 American cities celebrating 50 years of Alvin Ailey's masterpiece dance creation “Revelations,” which will be part of the performance program tomorrow. “It's a seminal piece,” Jamison said of the work that uses spirituals to explore what Ailey himself called the cultural heritage of the African-American — “sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.”

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater itself emerged more than 52 years ago from an exciting and now legendary performance at the 92nd Street Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African-American modern dancers. One of its most famous performers over the years was the tall, striking Jamison. She became artistic director in 1989 after Ailey's untimely death at the age of 58.

Coming up is probably the dance company's most significant move since then. Jamison, who turns 68 today, is retiring at the end of next month. Her replacement will be choreographer Robert Battle.

However, during a telephone interview from Ailey's headquarters in Manhattan last week, this was a carefully staged piece of choreography that the straight-talking Jamison seemed to downplay personally, except to praise Battle (a new work by Battle, “The Hunt,” is also on the program for tomorrow's performance).

“He's going to do a fine job. He's a very talented man,” she said.

Her retirement has been in the works for some time, having been first announced in 2008. The appointment of Battle, 38, who although from outside the Ailey company had staged several works with them over the years, was announced last May. The two have been working together for several months. On July 1, Jamison becomes, according to the company, “artistic director emerita.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Jamison said. “All I'm doing is handing over a title.”

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper of England in 2007, Jamison was asked “Who or what have you sacrificed for your art?” Her response was, “I haven't had a family, but I don't think of that as a sacrifice; my dancers are my family. And I'm fortunate enough to have spent my entire career doing what I love. Not many people can say that.”

Given those feelings, is retirement going to be difficult?

“I'll let you know when I get on that side,” she said last week, reiterating, “I'm not going anywhere. The fortunate thing is the future of the company.”

Asked what she has enjoyed the most or is proudest of during her time with the company, Jamison said, “Actually, all of it. All of it is an exquisite journey.”

Her journey began in Philadelphia where she was going to ballet school at the age of 6, and was considered a protégé by 10.

But how would her life have turned out had she not met Alvin Ailey?

“I can't really be hypothetical about that,” she said. “The first woman (person) to bring me to New York City was Agnes de Mille.” De Mille, another dancing legend, introduced Jamison to the American Ballet Theatre of New York with whom Jamison made her debut in 1964. Around that time Ailey reportedly spotted Jamison in a “disastrous” audition and yet invited her to join his company in 1965. She was his “gangly girl with no hair,” his beauty, Ailey said. He created some of his most enduring dances for her, including “Cry.”

“It was very prophetic. I've had a guided life,” Jamison said. “Alvin Ailey was a major part of my dance life; so were a couple of hundred other individuals.”

Jamison danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 15 years, and then became a guest artist and choreographer with dance and ballet companies all over the world until a very ill Ailey called her back to the fold in 1989 to take over.

“It was quick. Looking back on that, we hit the ground running,” Jamison recalled. Ailey died Dec. 1, 1989, was buried five days later, and four days after that the company started a new season, she said. Jamison is credited with taking over a company with a deficit and turning fortunes around so that in 2004 it moved to a new home at 55th Street and 9th Avenue in New York that is the largest complex exclusively dedicated to dance in the U.S.

Jamison again eschewed the “I” and spread the recognition. “We can sit (here) … and enjoy it because of a board directors and the rest of the world that floods to that community on 9th Ave.”

Her choreography of credit then went back to the first steps.

“He left us a living legacy,” she said of Ailey. Ailey always had a “seriousness” of intent, “but he also had a great sense of humor …”

“He always loved people, and he loved to be able to communicate that through his art. We dance in the joy of what he left us.”

[via - telegram.com]