 |
|
|
From Matthew Rushing's Uptown
|
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
presents the Boston premieres of 3 new works
This year's Alvin Ailey American Dance Company engagement includes three Boston premieres: Artistic Director Judith Jamison's Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places), Ronald K. Brown's Dancing Spirit, and Matthew Rushing's Uptown.
Inspired by a series of her own drawings, Judith Jamison's Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places) boasts costumes by Paul Tazewell, scenic and lighting design by Al Crawford, and original compositions by ELEW.
"I was intrigued by the idea of people going internal, going into their heads, in the midst of such a public place and showing us what their inner being is going though in the moment," she explains.
In choreographing her new work, Jamison took inspiration from African and Indian dance forms, particularly the Fanga (Liberian dance of invocation), the Sabar dances of Senegal, and South Indian Bharata Natyam. "I really wanted to show how we are all bound together as human beings."
Ronald K. Brown created Dancing Spirit as a celebration of Judith Jamison's 20th anniversary as Artistic Director. Brown took his inspiration, as well as the title of the work, from Jamison's 1993 biography.
"I appreciated how Ms. Jamison wrote about dancers extending themselves fully into movement about using their whole self in movement," says Brown.
Throughout the journey of Dancing Spirit, Brown explains, "the dancers represent the spirit dance an in the end the dance becomes the dancers standing before us [the audience]. They are coming out saying ‘thank you' in the end."
18-year company veteran Matthew Rushing devised Uptown as a highly theatrical, episodic survey of some of the key figures and events of the Harlem Renaissance. He explains ,"I want this piece to be fun, to be a celebration of the whole period and the heroes of that era. But I do hope to provoke thought among people of different generations, especially younger people who don't know much about this period."
While recognizing that he couldn't possibly include everybody who contributed to the mystique of the Harlem Renaissance, Rushing hopes that those he chose to highlight (W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Florence Mills, and Langston Hughes) will inspire in audiences the same fascination he feels for the era. "Shimmy shakers, jazz makers, and innovators abounded," he says. "Artists and intellectuals all were embraced on the street of Harlem."
|
|
