Alvin Ailey held his first dance concert in March, 1958 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Nearly 60 years later, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is synonymous with American contemporary dance, boasting more than 235 dances in its rep and one in particular that never gets old.
A trip to the theater for an Ailey concert is not complete without its iconic closer—Alvin Ailey's 1960 suite of dances, called Revelations. Following Ailey's death in 1989 due to complications from AIDS, Judith Jamison lead the company for more than 20 years before passing the torch to current Artistic Director Robert Battle in 2011. Coincidentally, this past World AIDS Day, on Dec. 1, marked the 25th year since Ailey's passing. For a dance company to survive, or even thrive for this long is rare, but what makes this company so special is it has found an ideal balance between celebrating its past and looking toward the future.
Following a successful season opener at its home in New York City, the company kicked off for an 18-city national tour Feb. 3. True to tradition, Ailey returns to the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University—its Chicago home for the last 45 years—this spring. The prestigious training company Ailey II will remain in New York for a newly formed independent season including eight performances at the Joyce Theater.
Included on the tour are repertory standards such as Ulysses Dove's 1989 Episodes and—needless to say—Alvin Ailey's Revelations ( 1960 ) with some interesting new inclusions. Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing premiered his ODETTA during the company's season opener at Lincoln Center, alongside The Pleasure of the Lesson, a first-ever collaboration with San Francisco-based superstar Robert Moses. Other interesting and notable additions include Christopher Wheeldon's 2005 After the Rain Pas de Deux, David Parsons' stunning solo Caught ( 1982 ) and Ohad Naharin's Minus 16 ( famously adopted by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2000 ). Wheeldon, who Chicagoans may recognize from his highly successful new staging of Swan Lake performed by the Joffrey Ballet last fall, set his acclaimed duet created for New York City Ballet on the Ailey company last year. After the Rain Pas de Deux and ODETTA are joined by older works for the company's Chicago leg of the tour at Auditorium Theatre.
Joining the company on the tour are newlywed dancers Antonio Douthit-Boyd, 33 and Kirven Douthit-Boyd, 30. Married June 7, 2013, the two are the first legally married same-sex couple in company history. The Ailey company also has deep ties to Chicago: Dancer Ghrai DeVore joined the company in 2010 after stretches with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater ( where her mother, Elana D. Anderson, has danced for two decades ), Hubbard Street 2 and Dance Works Chicago. Veteran dancer Vernard J. Gilmore, who joined Ailey in 1997, attended the now defunct Barat College Conservatory of Dance in Lake Forest. As a Chicago native, Gilmore recently visited for the Auditorium Theatre's 125th-anniversary celebration earlier this winter.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tours to the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, 55 E. Congress Pkwy., on March 6-15. Tickets start at $27; call 800-982-ARTS ( 2787 ) or visit auditoriumtheatre.org .
Also at the Auditorium Theatre
Opening this weekend for two weeks is the Joffrey Ballet's annual program featuring contemporary choreographers, this year titled "Unique Voices." Following last year's smash hit Episode 31, Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman returned to stage the U.S. premiere of his 2012 Tulle. True to its name, Tulle is a ballet—Ekman's first using pointe shoes—incorporating traditional costumes and candid ( if not hilarious ) commentary on ballet. "What is ballet?," Ekman asks in his report of the piece on his website. "Where did it come from? Why are they wearing those hard shoes? Why is Swan Lake so famous? Why do we need ballet?! Do we need ballet? All these questions popped up in my head and became the core concept for the piece."
Included on the program with Tulle are company premieres of Canadian Choreographer James Kudelka's The Man in Black—a bit of Americana complete with cowboy boots and music by Johnny Cash—and Stanton Welch's Maninyas. Welch's elaborate restaging of La Bayadere was quite successfully adopted by Joffrey in 2013; his 1996 series of duets and trios Maninyas is on loan from San Francisco Ballet for the upcoming program.
The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago presents Unique Voices as part of its 2014-15 programming at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, 55 E. Congress Pkwy., Feb. 11-22.
Tickets are $32-155; visit the Joffrey Ballets box office, 10 E. Randolph St.; or www.ticketmaster.com .
