'Revelations' at 35: still resonating after all these years.

NEW YORK CITY-- "Revelations began with the music," the late Alvin Ailey said about his masterpiece, which is being performed on its thirty-fifth anniversary as part of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's opening--night gala program December 7 (it will be paired with a new work by Ailey's successor, Judith Jamison). "As early as I can remember, I was enthralled by the music played and sung in the small black churches in every small Texas town my mother and I lived in," Ailey continued in his autobiography, also called Revelations. The dance, one of the most celebrated of this century, has helped to popularize that music all over the world. If ever any one piece of art proved the universality of great spiritual works, it is Revelations.

"My plan was to make Revelations the second part of an all-black evening of dance," Ailey wrote of the piece, which was born in the early years of the Civil Rights movement. "My aim was to show the coming and the growth and reach of black culture."

Working in a dingy Broadway studio, Ailey decided the work should have three parts, all danced to spirituals, with the mood moving from dejection to regeneration to jubilation. The first part, "Pilgrim of Sorrow," was, Ailey said, "about trying to get up out of the ground. The costumes and sets would be colored brown, an earth color, for going into the earth. The second part, `Take Me to the Water,' was something very close to me--the baptismal, the purification rite. Its colors would be white and pale blue. Then there would be the section, Move, Members, Move,' surrounding the gospel church, the holy rollers, and all that church happiness. Its colors would be earth tones, yellow and black." The figures of sculptor Henry Moore--abstracted, stretched, strained and pulled--inspired Ailey to have the costumes made of jersey.

When Revelations had its 1960 premiere at the YMHA in New York, it was sixty-five minutes long. For a 1961 presentation at Jacob's Pillow, Ailey shortened it to its current half-hour length, cutting material from each section.

"Alvin started working on it in class," says Ella Thompson Moore, who, with her husband, Charles Moore, danced in the premiere of Revelations. "He was never a very good teacher because he was always choreographing. He started by telling us about the people in church, what his mother's friends were like--about ladies with big bosoms who'd sit around on Sundays fanning themselves. He always gave us images to work with.

"When we performed, he'd been so busy giving us our combinations that he never knew his own. So we'd have to tell him what to do. He was one of those dancers that no matter what they do, they look good. He looked like a panther. But I think he stopped dancing so early (in 1964) because he couldn't keep getting onstage and forgetting his parts."

On the company's first Asia tour in 1962, Moore recalls, Revelations drew ovations. "The secret of its success," she says, "is that it is the true expression of someone's faith. Alvin was really saying something; that's why it touches everyone."

Seeing Revelations in 1962 made Williams decide to become a dancer. "I accidentally went to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park when it was being performed, and I was stunned by its beauty," he says. "I decided right there to do everything to become an Ailey dancer." Williams has danced Revelations hundreds of times, appearing in most roles. "It looks so simple, but the dances are very difficult."

Williams is now passing Revelations on to his students at the Ailey school. If the current generation of Ailey dancers have more technique to draw on in executing the choreography, the original dancers of the ballet had something else, Williams says: "We relied on the emotion of the piece. You have to remember, we had a much harder time in the sixties. We struggled, usually for very little money. For us, Revelations was like a religious experience; now, it's gotten very slick. I try to pull the emotion out of (the students), but it's either not there, or they aren't willing to express it."

Williams had two teachers for Revelations: Ailey and James Truitte, who passed away earlier this year. "Jimmy was my guiding light," says Williams. The student has now become the teacher. Aubrey Lynch, the last dancer chosen by Ailey for his company before he died in 1989, became Williams's pupil. "I often had to do what we called the Twiggy' section; I had to carry a branch overhead and lead the dancers out at the end. Every time my eyes would well up. I made a spiritual connection with the piece the first day I started learning it. It was the reason I was dancing."

(The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater season opens December 7 with a gala program of Revelations and Judith Jamison's new Riverside, and continues through December 31. An interview with Donald McKayle, who is reviving his Rainbow `Round My Shoulder for the season, appears on page 29)