Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

New York City Center

December 3, 2008-January 4, 2009

Ailey's 50th anniversary season featured three new productions, two world premieres, and two programs of Ailey/Ellington works with live music. Each performance began with a film tribute to Ailey's career by Steven Budlong, in which interviews with Carmen deLavallade, Donald Byrd, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Garth Fagan extolled Alley's vision and legacy.

Dynamic dancing by fabulous performers is always front-and-center in the extensive Ailey repertory, filling seats with enthusiastic fans. Bursts of applause greet difficult-looking passages the way ovations follow operatic arias or circus stunts, and the dancers obviously relish wowing the crowds.

Two new productions of Ailey ballets from the 1950s and '60s illustrate his eclecticism. In Masekela Langage (1969) colorful characters populate a steamy southern bistro, where music by South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela blares from an onstage jukebox. They squabble amiably, doing bits of fox trot and quickstep, till Matthew Rushing, bruised and bloodied, staggers in and, after an agonized solo, collapses. The others return to their opening positions, ignoring his prostrate body, and the dance switches from inconsequential fluff to a searing commentary on indifference.

Blues Suite (1958) also depicts disaffected people. A live onstage combo and a tall, A-frame ladder flank the stage. What's most striking about the male-female relationships here is the rage the women express toward the men. In 1958, pre-Civil Rights Act, there was understandable anger in the black community, but it seemed to have had a softer edge back then. Black women's eternal frustration with their men's behavior was less mean than Ailey's current cast interprets it.

George Faison's 1971 Suite Otis, another new production, is an entertaining, straight-ahead jazz interpretation of Otis Redding's greatest hits for six couples in pink and red outfits (by Faison). A bride in black, dancing to "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)" seems an incongruous insert. But when four men and four women grind their hips and bat their legs high in the air to "Can't Turn You Loose," we're off on a joyous, funky ride. And the women's hip-swinging "Satisfaction" is a sassy celebration of their gender.

The most distinctive aspect of company member Hope Boykin's premiere, Go in Grace, is the onstage a cappella group Sweet Honey In The Rock. Its five singers (and a signer) narrate the tale of a nuclear family with original songs and asides like, "We've got her now," "Oh, they're bad boys!" that leave no doubt about what we're supposed to be thinking.

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The scenario of a young girl's growing up is nicely developed, although blatantly literal movement makes the dance look schematic, as if the emotional shading were to be added later. A duet between Amos J. Machanic, Jr. and Rosalyn Deshauteurs beautifully captures a tender father-daughter relationship. But when the Father dies and Renee Robinson--the troupe's most expressively mature member--discovers his body, we expect a grieving solo that, regrettably, doesn't materialize. Sweet Honey's harmonies are luscious, but their giddy, soulful omnipresence tends to upstage the dancing.

In the other premiere, Festa Barocca by Mauro Bigonzetti, jewel-bright circle skirts on both men and women fill the stage with a rippling rainbow of fabric that enhances the syncopated arm and torso motifs in the group sections. Boykin emerges from the writhing mass to establish herself as deus ex machina. She motivates--and eavesdrops on--a ravishing duet for Gwynenn Taylor Jones and Clifton Brown that explores leveraging as a metaphor for trust and affection. Boykin snaps her fingers and becomes the center of a surging, exhilarating passage for a dozen sexy, bare-chested men in skirts.

Duets for Robinson and Guillermo Asca, and Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims, and solos for Machanic and Yusha-Marie Sorzano emerge from the group. Perhaps the contrast of Handel's music, book-ended by Redding's rock 'n' roll and the gospels of Revelations, made Festa seem so fresh. It'll be interesting to see how the ballet evolves, but on first viewing, it's a winner.

Linda Sims and Brown's rendition of Elisa Monte's 1979 classic, Treading, was breathtaking. But in the title role of Bejart's 1970 Firebird, Brown's broad grin belied the dark implications of the gender-reversed fable. And Alley's dancers managed to turn Tharp's "Golden Section" from The Catherine Wheel into a bright, virtuosic showpiece that missed Tharp's dynamic nuance and the edginess of David Byrne's score.

Live music by Wynton Marsalis's Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, conducted by Eric Reed, added special excitement to two programs titled "Ailey & Ellington." On Program A, Ailey's 1974 Night Creature reminded us again of Ailey's unabashed borrowing of Graham contractions, Lester Horton layouts, and Jack Cole arms. Ailey even pilfered from the first section of his own 1960 Revelations the recurring wedge of dancers, waving arms and fluttering hands.

Other highlights included a powerful rendition of Reflections in D (1962) by Machanic that recalled the technical clarity and passion of Dudley Williams in the original. Excerpts from other Ellington-inspired dances, The Road of the Phoebe Snow (1959) by Talley Beatty, Caravan (1976) by Louis Falco, and by Ailey, a movie musical-inspired passage from The Mooche (1975) for Constance Stamatiou vamping eight tuxedoed men, an amazing solo by Linda Sims from Pas de Duke (1976), and the Martin Luther King section from Three Black Kings (1976) with the redoubtable Matthew Rushing in the lead, attested to Ailey's stylistic versatility and prolific output.