The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed three new works and Ailey's rousing Revelations at its Saturday matinee performance. Everything about this performance felt fresh, with brilliant colors and powerful movement. The opening dance was Jazz Island, choreographed by Maija García in 2025. It was the second time in two days that I saw an homage to African-based religion. Didę from Compagnie Multicorps at Columbia College Dance Center was a celebration of the "divine feminine" in the Yoruba tradition.
I interpreted Jazz Island as a narrative of Haitian Voudun deities. Erzulie Dantor the Mother Goddess made an entrance floating through the air with her diaphanous gown covering the dancers carrying her. The setting is a marketplace with a young girl selling flowers who catches the eye of several young men, but is also spied by the Trickster deity, Papa Legba. The flower seller's mother is pushing her daughter toward a man hawking jewelry. The music by Etienne Charles has a tropical sway as do the dancers. García adapted Jazz Island as an homage to Black Gods, Green Islands originally choreographed by Geoffrey Holder. The colorful costumes by Carlton Jones were crisp and cool with the Papa Legba figure clad in black with a snazzy top hat. Al Crawford's lighting and set design added to the magical feel. A sparkling gold moon hung over the mountain ledges, lowering and rising, illuminated
After the first intermission, Matthew Neenan's Difference Between made its Chicago premiere. It was also Neenan's choreography debut. It is a fluid and precise ensemble dance with music from Heather Christian and the Arbornauts punctuating the movements. The music is hybrid New Age and classical featuring Christian's voice with a staggered chorus doing a syncopated chant. Difference Between felt like a spiritual meditation with dancers being carried overhead as if on a moving altar.
Song of the Anchorite was a solo dance choreographed in 2025 by Jamar Roberts and featuring Yannick Lebrun. This dance was an update on Alvin Ailey's 1961 solo Hermit Songs. Ailey's take was a meditation on medieval illuminated manuscripts. The Anchorites were a reclusive sect from the middle ages. Roberts' choreography features a man bound in strips of cloth or leather. Lebrun dances in front of Joseph Anthony Gaito's sparse set design of a black backdrop with the outline of a bare tree. The movements are a portrait in supplication with beautiful elongated movements. Every dancer in Alvin Ailey is sculpted and cut, and Lebrun is a gorgeous example; elegant and graceful dancing to a jazz adaptation of Maurice Ravel played by Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen.
The grand finale was Ailey's masterpiece Revelations, which premiered in 1960 as memories in movement from Alvin Ailey's spiritual DNA. Judith Jamison danced Revelations as Ailey's muse and eventually became the artistic director. The three segments of this piece are grounded in gospel music featuring classics, "Wade in the Water," "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" and "Rocka my Soul in the Soul of Abraham." The Auditorium turned into a Sunday morning in Harlem. It that could also have been Chicago's South or West Side. The audience got into the spirit clapping and rocking.
I highly recommend seeing a performance or two of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater when they come through Chicago or a town near you. Two different programs were performed over three days. Both had premieres, but I saw Program B, which had more premieres. Part A had two premieres with a reprise of A Case of You (2005). I would have liked to have seen all of the new choreography on the program, with Revelations. That is my only quibble with this tour. Ailey and Jamison are American treasures in my eyes. Alicia Graf Mack is the new artistic director with Matthew Rushing as the associate artistic director. Mack was a principal dancer with Alvin Ailey and dean of the Dance Department at Juilliard. Those are some lofty credentials that will serve the ensemble with a fresh vision and deep respect for tradition.
This tour of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater played April 24-26 at the Auditorium, 50 East Ida B. Wells Drive. For more information, visit https://ailey.org/ and check auditoriumtheatre.org for the 2026 series Celebrating Women in Dance.
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