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By
Jennifer Dunning / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Ailey Family Celebrates One of Its Own"
"On Tuesday night at City Center, the troupe honored [Associate Artistic Director Masazumi Chaya] on his 35th anniversary at Ailey, with film and reminiscences from the stage by colleagues including Judith Jamison, the 1970s Ailey star who directs the company." Read review...
11:18 AM - Permalink
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By
Robert Johnson / The Star-Ledger
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"'Flowers' overshadows Ailey troupe's premieres"
"People-watching is among this city's most popular forms of entertainment. Spotting an eyebrow-raising stunt or marveling at a fashion statement, the city dweller finds amusement reliably in the bustle of the street...Editing that colorful parade for the stage can be risky, however. In "The Groove to Nobody's Business," a new dance the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presents this season at New York City Center, choreographer Camille A. Brown assembles a lively cast of characters in prime locations for people-watching." Read review...
2:51 PM - Permalink
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By
Susan Reiter / Danceviewtimes
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Connecting with the Past"
"Revivals, more than premieres, are proving to be the more noteworthy aspect of the current Ailey season. Several works that strongly evoke the particular moment in which they were created are providing these dancers with meaty interpretive challenges, while the two novelties tailor-made for these versatile and indefatigable performers have turned out to be once-over-lightly efforts that are amiable, mildly flavorful character studies weak on craft and focus -- and offering little evidence of any galvanizing purpose." Read review...
2:47 PM - Permalink
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By
Lori Ortiz / Gay City News
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Spunk and Flight"
"Maurice Béjart's "Firebird," abstract and spiritual, is about a strong and magical male, a phoenix character that comes up from the ashes. Considering the uplifting Alvin Ailey American Dance style and its incredible contingent of male dancers, selecting it for one of this season's company premiers must have been a no-brainer for director Judith Jamison." Read review...
9:30 AM - Permalink
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By
Jennifer Dunning / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Fame's Demands, and the Flights of Fancy to Escape"
"Alvin Ailey had a love-hate relationship with fame. He began his career in dance as a take-charge young artist whose performing and fledgling choreography were fueled more by apparent self-confidence than by deep knowledge of the art form." Read review...
8:57 AM - Permalink
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By
Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Flaming Creatures: If it's Christmas, it must be Ailey time"
"In many ways, Béjart's ultra-clear choreographic patterns remind me of early modern dance. In a close phalanx, moving as one, the nine dancers (both male and female) shift directions suddenly to gaze into threatening darkness; leap, spin, and crawl into contrapuntal squads or solo outbursts; and thrust fists in the air. The male firebird has the flashy, more balletic dancing--the exalted jumps, the beating of feet together in the air." Read review...
6:31 AM - Permalink
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By
Joel Lobenthal / New York Sun
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Dancing on The Subway"
""Jump!" commanded one of the slithering sybarites populating Alvin Ailey's "Night Creature" on Friday night at City Center. "How high?" was the body-language response of one of the men who were in hot pursuit. Their exchange is the logical extension of the doggy-paw hand jive that swirls throughout the piece, an homage to the vocabulary of Broadway and Harlem routines of the sepia years." Read review...
2:20 PM - Permalink
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By
Jennifer Dunning / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"The Rhymthic Ebbing and Flowing of the Subway Riders of New York"
"Is the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater setting a trend? Both of its premieres this season are light and relatively frivolous. Fredrick Earl Mosely took on legends of the American West in his new and atypical "Saddle Up!," And Camille A. Brown celebrates the captive community of New York subway riders in her delicious "Groove to Nobody's Business," first performed by the Ailey company on Friday night at City Center." Read review...
2:11 PM - Permalink
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By
Tonya Plank / Swan Lake Samba Girl
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"The Groove to Nobody's Business and The Road of the Phoebe Snow"
"Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater recently premiered two new pieces: a brand new work by young choreographer Camille A. Brown called "The Groove to Nobody's Business," and a re-staging of Talley Beatty's 1959 "The Road of the Phoebe Snow." I loved both of them." Read review...
1:00 AM - Permalink
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By
Jennifer Dunning / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Crisscrossing the Stage, Highly Charged Moves From Familiar Pieces"
"How easily the memory plays tricks. Or does it? The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater made a nearly abstract piece of Talley Beatty's classic "Road of the Phoebe Snow" on Wednesday night at City Center. And the company performed Ailey's "River" as if it were anything but the sometimes pallid-seeming exercise in choreographing for a ballet troupe." Read review...
8:30 AM - Permalink
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By
Tonya Plank / Swan Lake Samba Girl
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"More Work From "Blood Memory" Please!"
"I love this dance company so much. And I love Alvin Ailey's work in particular. AAADT artistic director Judith Jamison quotes Ailey as having said that his choreography is the result of his "blood memory" of his southern boyhood. He said the greatest works of art are the most personal, come from the deepest-rooted place. Nothing could be more true." Read review...
3:05 PM - Permalink
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By
Tobi Tobias / Bloomberg
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Bejart's Spandex `Firebird' Gets Demure With Ailey: Tobi Tobias"
"Seeing the late Maurice Bejart's ``Firebird,'' the centerpiece of the gala that opened the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's five-week season at the New York City Center on Nov. 28, you'd never guess that the French choreographer was celebrated and reviled for works that were spectacular and scandalous." Read review...
7:08 AM - Permalink
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By
Joel Lobenthal / New York Sun
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Ailey Saddles Up"
"Just the sight of 10 members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dressed in colorful costumes (designed by Ann Hould Ward) for the world premiere of Fredrick Earl Mosley's "Saddle Up!" Friday night was improbable enough to instantly spark the audience's funny bone." Read review...
6:41 AM - Permalink
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By
Alastair Macaulay / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Moving Between Cool Style and Broadway-Flash Pizazz"
"The Alvin Ailey season's first three performances were completely different in repertory, except that all three ended with Ailey's 1960 classic, "Revelations." There was no doubt that the audience was happy about that. People don't applaud just what happens in this piece; they applaud some of it before it even starts to happen." Read review...
6:36 AM - Permalink
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By
Robert Johnson / The Star Ledger
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"'Firebird' soars on Ailey troupe's wings"
"The sudden alliance between Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the recently deceased French choreographer Maurice Béjart has left some fans scratching their heads in bewilderment. Why would the Ailey, which favors the athletic torsion of American modern dance, turn to Béjart for a season premiere?" Read review...
6:20 AM - Permalink
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By
Hilary Ostlere / Financial Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"A magnificent flying machine"
"When the company toured Maurice Béjart's version of The Firebird this year, the choreographer was very much alive. It was poignant that less than a week after he died, his Firebird should head the opening of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater winter season, unavoidably turning it into a kind of requiem." Read review...
6:44 AM - Permalink
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By
Clive Barnes / New York Post
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"'Revelations' A Savior"
Judith Jamison, artistic director and grande doyenne of the company, paid tribute to Maurice Bejart, who died in Switzerland on Thanksgiving at age 80...She called him, with considerable justice, "one of the great voices of contemporary dance," and, by coincidence, the season was scheduled to open with the company's first performance in New York of his "Firebird." Read review...
6:38 AM - Permalink
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By
Joel Lobenthal / New York Sun
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Ailey's Audience Participation"
"After the curtain came down on "Revelations" at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's season opening Wednesday night, the City Center audience cheered so long that the performers finally returned the applause. At Ailey, the audience and performers are on the most cozy and comfortable of terms -- never more so than on its gala opening nights in New York, and never more so than during and after "Revelations." Read review...
6:31 AM - Permalink
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By
Apollinaire Scherr / Newsday
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater"
"The Alvin Ailey troupe's rendition of [Maurice] Béjart's "Firebird"...Before an elegant gala crowd that included hip-hop impresario and born-again Buddhist Russell Simmons stumping for the company...was gentle, not dull; inflected with the rhythms and stances of Indian classical dance, not Orientalist; touchingly vulnerable, not unctuously sexual...As the first U.S. company to stage a complete Béjart ballet, the Ailey dancers did better by the choreographer than his own classically trained troupe has - and just in time for us to mourn him. Béjart died last week, at the age of 80." Read review...
6:22 AM - Permalink
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By
Alastair Macaulay / New York Times
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Resurrecting a 'Firebird' and Transcending a Choreographer in a Single Bound"
"The dancing began with a company premiere ("Firebird," by the late Maurice Béjart) and ended with a performance of "Revelations," Ailey's best-loved work, which featured sensationally good live musical accompaniment. This was a gala that was introduced as a special event; the Ailey dancers then fulfilled all expectations, though I suspect it is their hallmark that they perform this way at all performances and not just galas." Read review...
6:09 AM - Permalink
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By
Susan Yung / New York Sun
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Performance Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31
"Clifton Brown's Breakout Year"
"He's not a newcomer, but dancer Clifton Brown will receive a trial by fire of sorts when the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater begins its month-long season at City Center on Wednesday. Mr. Brown, 27, will perform in nearly every work on the company's schedule, and will be featured in the season's three major premieres, including Maurice Béjart's "Firebird" and Camille A. Brown's raucous "The Groove to Nobody's Business."" Read review...
10:01 AM - Permalink
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