Following the Subtle Current Upstream / Me, Myself and You / Revelations

As someone who began dance training in the greater Los Angeles area, I noticed three distinct kinds of regional dance: commercial dance (i.e., MTV or televised competitions that privilege entertainment value), concert dance (i.e., the “highbrow” aesthetics of ballet and modern dance), and cultural dance (i.e., amateur or professional ensembles that celebrate a particular ethnic group). In the late 1990s, I saw Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for the first time. Ailey’s iconic choreography and electrifying dancers dismantled my reductive view of the dance world. Beholding an Ailey performance is at once deeply entertaining—the audience members often clap, sing, and dance to Ailey’s beloved works; aesthetically pleasing—Ailey dancers demonstrate superb technique and artistry; and culturally enriching—Ailey repertoire communicates African American history and experience.1Today, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater remains one of the most celebrated multiracial dance companies. Founded in 1958, this ensemble honors the tradition of its visionary founder, Alvin Ailey (1931–89), while also commissioning new works that challenge modern and contemporary dance idioms and diversify embodied representations of Black culture. From April 2 to April 7, the Ailey company performed five different mixed-bill programs, identified with the letters A–E, at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. Program C, reviewed here, featured works by Alonzo King, Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, and Alvin Ailey.Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream began the program. King is the Founder and Director of Alonzo King LINES Ballet (San Francisco). King’s Following—a work commissioned by the Ailey company—premiered in New York in 2000 and was later revived in 2023. Following consists of five separate sections and features music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, and Miriam Makeba. The dancers’ costumes accentuate contrasts: women’s short dresses layered yellow splashes and sunny stripes onto deep earth tones, whereas men’s tunics bisected sheer and opaque dark fabrics. As dance scholars have noted, King is captivated by the metaphysical and spiritual capacities of human movement.2 Following likewise bears the imprint of religion. Loosely inspired by yoga and Hinduism, King included a passage from the Bhagavad Gita (2:23–25) in his program notes: “No weapon can pierce the soul; no fire can burn it. . . . The soul is said to be imponderable, unmanifested, and unchangeable.”3 What I believe King addresses here is the spiritual itinerary of the soul. That is, despite the vagaries of human life—politics, institutions, passions, and conflicts—the soul aims to return to its place of origin. As King explained in a recent interview about Following with Miami City Ballet, “Human beings, what we have in common, is to escape suffering, and to find some kind of joy that never grows stale.”4 King proposes that we can tap into this joy by rooting ourselves deep within our bodies. Rewiring our energy from outward to inward goes against the grain, creating a productive tension between the flesh and the spirit.Following abounds in cosmic imagery. The piece began with a pas de trois that presented the paradox of unity within diversity. Three men interlocked their arms while revolving in a circular pattern, reminiscent of the cosmic dance from Plato’s Timaeus. Eventually, they peeled away from the wheel. A male soloist entered the stage, adding to the spatial complexity. A later section involved three women, all entering from stage left, who traversed the stage with cascading motions. Their undulating alternations between piqué passés (a pricking motion of the supporting leg while the working leg lifts and forms a “number four” position against the supporting knee) and developpés in fondu (an unfolding extension of the working leg while the supporting leg bends gently) exerted an iconographic quality, as if King derived inspiration from ancient Roman sarcophagi. For instance, the women’s linear formation and artful plasticity suggested both a processional and sculptural quality. The musical score, which, at this point, involved classical Indian strains, contributed to the experience of the sacred. In another tableau, which incorporated tender vocal music, a pas de deux between a man and a woman explored the push-pull dynamic of mystical longing (i.e., as soon as the devotee achieves union, the divine surpasses them). At one moment the dancers’ partnered movements were harmoniously embracing, whereas at another moment the woman fell back toward (or below) the man, or deliberately turned away from him. Beyond mysticism in a general sense, this contradictory choreography also reminded me of Śiva, Hinduism’s quintessential god of dance, whose cosmic power radiates harmony and violence. As scholars of religion have shown, Śiva exerts creative and destructive forces upon the universe.5 The last section amplified this intensity: men and women populated the stage, executing synchronized movements—which give way to running—as the music accelerated and became more percussive. In the final tableau, a solitary male dancer knelt to the ground. He arched his back and gazed heavenward, suggesting a final surrender to the spirit.Despite King’s allusions to yoga and Hinduism, Following is not a work of Orientalism. His interest in religion and philosophy is intellectual, not artificial. In other words, King aims to transmute certain concepts into movement rather than showcase an exotic aesthetic. Following demonstrates how ballet can work against, rather than for, the colonial gaze. According to dance scholar Jill Nunes Jensen, “King’s primary interest is to communicate ballet’s global potential, incorporating influences and belief systems that the genre has historically been resistant to embrace.”6 Instead of appropriating harmful stereotypes, he embraces elements of culture to gesture toward an intercultural and inclusive endeavor.The program continued with the Bay Area premier of Me, Myself and You (2023) by former—and first Filipina—Ailey dancer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish. Danced by Caroline T. Dartey and James Gilmer, this entrancing pas de deux featured music by Duke Ellington (“In a Sentimental Mood”) and costumes by Dante Baylor. The piece began with Dartey onstage in a long, glamorous silver dress. With Gilmer’s help, she tossed aside this metallic overgarment to reveal a diaphanous little black dress.While the dance’s beginning conveyed a quality of flash as well as a sense of conformity (at least from the perspective of gender roles), Roxas-Dobrish’s subsequent choreography—punctuated by clever partnering—conjured an aesthetic of surprise. At one point, Dartey morphed her body into a shape resembling the fetal position, and then Gilmer lifted her overhead with suspense. Elsewhere, Roxas-Dobrish’s choreography toyed with the presentational formality of balletic partnering. At one moment while Dartey was held aloft, she resisted stasis by playfully swinging her feet from side to side. Me, Myself and You intensified the audience’s experience of the unforeseen with choreographed drops and falls. Dartey and Gilmer demonstrated impeccable timing, but the (pre-recorded) quasi-operatic music was too loud, its shrillness sometimes overpowering the dancers. Overlaying jazz and commercial dance onto ballet, Roxas-Dobrish recalled echoes of Twyla Tharp, yet her mastery of nimbleness and impetus of unpredictability are unique. In sum, Me, Myself and You was short, but memorable.As is something of a tradition at Zellerbach, the company concluded the evening with Alvin Ailey’s iconic Revelations, which premiered in 1960 and never ceases to evoke relevance. Ailey choreographed this piece to African American spirituals (arranged by Howard A. Roberts, et al.). The April 4 performance featured live gospel singers from the Revelations Choir and Band, directed and conducted by Damien Sneed, which made the performance all the more exhilarating. The dancers wore original costumes by Ves Harper, with select revisions by Barbara Fores. Dance scholar Thomas DeFrantz considers Revelations as one of the most important works of African American concert dance. Herein Ailey “confirm[ed] the durability of particular Africanist aesthetics,” including percussive attack, call-and-response, and multiple meters.7 According to art historian Robert Farris Thompson, Black dancing bodies are at once traditional and cutting edge; they access ancestral spirits (through ritualized movements and sacred song) and enact subversion (by stepping inside and against formalized rhythms). Thompson encapsulated the uniqueness of African/African diasporic dance forms with the winsome phrase “the aesthetic of the cool.”8 In the context of performance, coolness constitutes an expansive repertoire—sacredness, purification, healing, humor, play, and beyond.9Revelations encompasses ten distinct dance sequences organized in three sections, the first of which is “Pilgrim of Sorrow.” As its title implies, these dances mine the sorrowful dimension of Black spirituals. The curtain opened to a group of dancers in a wedge formation. They danced to an a cappella rendering of “I Been ’Buked,” which was prayer-like and hauntingly beautiful. The dancers’ motions were minimalist; they rarely took up space, and instead communicated through gesture. With feet turned out and apart (or “second position” in ballet), they bent deeply toward the floor. Then they straightened their knees and closed their feet, while extending their arms and fingers toward the sky. These movements, which underscored humanity’s deep connections to earth and heaven, activated a link between the terrestrial and the celestial. In “Fix Me, Jesus,” the third and final dance within this section, Khalia Campbell and Jermaine Terry demonstrated exquisite lyricism and effortless partnering. Aspects of their pas de deux—however tender—emblematized the aforementioned “aesthetic of the cool.” For example, when Campbell extended one leg to the side, she tilted her body toward her supporting leg. In other words, she balanced off-balance. In another iteration of this extension, she fell to one side, but Terry caught her at the last moment. Elsewhere, Campbell bent forward while Terry arched his back, bent his knees, and raised his heels. Such captivating asymmetry and off-center composition, according to dance studies scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild, embody the Africanist aesthetic.10In Revelations’ middle section, “Take Me to the Water,” Ailey’s choreography envisions religious rituals. During “Processional/Honor,” the dancers enacted simple steps: a few steps backward, a few steps forward, while swaying their hips. The men were shirtless with white pants, and the women wore long white dresses that whirled as they turned. The dancers held various props, most notably scarves/veils and white parasols. In the history of Christianity, processions are often linked to the pomp and ceremony befitting bishops, popes, and kings. But Ailey’s pared-down aesthetic recalls the supposed origin of Christian procession, when Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey (Mark 11). In Revelations, this privileging of humility works to mirror and foreshadow African Americans’ journey from subjugation to empowerment.The theme of liberation becomes more apparent in the next dance, “Wade in the Water,” which is perhaps the most memorable moment of Ailey’s celebrated oeuvre. Here the props were not merely decorative. The long white and blue scarves activated water, specifically the water of baptism. Interestingly, the company’s Associate Director Matthew Rushing first saw Revelations after being baptized.11 Jacquelin Harris (the woman with the parasol) initiated the dance, stepping from side to side with generous arm motions. Renaldo Maurice and Constance Stamatiou joined her with mobile shoulders and torsos, and eventually executed spirited floorwork. Clearly, Ailey aimed to visualize the physicality of baptism. Their full-bodied movements suggested a totalizing and immersive baptismal rite. In early Christianity, such baptisms symbolized the death of one’s old self as necessary to bring about one’s spiritual rebirth in Christ. As DeFrantz has argued, the baptismal scene in Revelations is also subversive. The lyrics contain the lines “Wade in the water . . . God’s a-gonna trouble the water,” which, coupled with the dancers’ bold motions, signify the Underground Railroad and a politics of resistance.12 The section finished with a solo piece, “I Wanna Be Ready.” Vernard J. Gilmore’s performance was a tour de force, as Ailey’s choreography demands incredible abdominal strength, specifically, as well as sustained corporeal control, generally. In this part of Revelations, the anxious movements and lyrics were probably the closest in tone to the biblical book of Revelation. The constant juxtaposition between descending to the floor and arising from the floor signaled the fear of the end of days as well as the anticipation of the beatific vision. The apocalyptic tenor of “I Wanna Be Ready” accessed yet another dimension of “coolness”: a rite of purification that ultimately empowers the purified individual.13“Move, Members, Move” constitutes the final segment of the Revelations triptych. In “Sinner Man,” the first of four dances/songs, the lyrics describe the infernal actions of running, hiding, melting, and boiling—in other words, acts of desperate futility and eternal punishment that transpire when sinners are too late for praying. Christopher R. Wilson, Chalvar Monteiro, and Patrick Coker danced with fury and explosiveness against a décor of blood red flames. Coker’s infinite pirouettes were particularly awesome. As a medievalist, I reflected on the wheeling sodomites from Dante’s Inferno when the Ailey trio ricocheted about the fiery backdrop. Although scholars have debated the actual sin that Dante condemned in canto 15—it may not have been homosexuality—the poet’s sinners are, evidently, being eternally punished by a relentless rain of fire. By contrast, Ailey’s dancers seem to defy the law of gravity, resisting subjugation.14The subsequent pieces reconstruct rural, Black church services. The women donned period dresses and hats and waved their fans, whereas the men wore black trousers, white shirts, and gold vests. Throughout this section of Revelations, the choreography depicted Black dancing bodies channeling spirit. In fact, as DeFrantz demonstrates, Ailey derived inspiration from the Ring Shout, a communal circle dance accompanied by chanting and shouting that reconnected enslaved Africans to their ancestors.15 The final dance, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” conveyed jubilation and triumph. The movements were repetitive and relatively uncomplex: foot stomps, lunges, poses, and single pirouettes. The dancers’ intentionality is what gave the choreography its weight and fortitude.Witnessing the company dancers alongside the live gospel choir was a special treat; the music reverberated throughout Zellerbach and lent another dimension to the Ailey dancers’ signature dynamism. Revelations left no audience member unmoved. According to Associate Director Rushing, this work is about the Black experience in particular, and humanity in general: “No matter what background you come from, when you come and see ‘Revelations,’ you see yourself and you feel a sense of spirit.”16