Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

City Center
New York, New York
December 4, 2002-January 5, 2003

Despite Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's announcement of a "Women's Choreography Initiative," the monthlong Christmas season was dominated by men mainly because the Ailey men are dynamos unmatched in the modern dance world for their virtuosity. In part, however, it is because Judith Jamison, AAADT'S artistic director, showcased them. At least one of the season's premieres--Ohad Naharin's Black Milk--was staged for them, while Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's Shelter, once a powerful all-female indictment of homelessness, has been made into a men's-only showstopper. And, unlike the revival of Elisa Monte's 1979 Treading, the new works commissioned from Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Francesca Harper were weak.

Prayers From the Edge, says Taylor-Corbett, was a meditation on Africa and the Middle East in the aftermath of the Six Day War. "Remembering that time," she told Newsday, "it struck me how many conflicts ... are religion based, and how so often people define their god as having nothing to do with anyone else."

Little of this comes across. There are two warring clans in Prayers, and a pair of doomed lovers, but why they are doomed (apart from the fact that they're from different clans) and why the clans are at war is never made clear. Stylistically, the choreography is a hodgepodge, with passages of slow, signifying ritual, ballet-style lifts (for the love duets), percussive rhythms and big convulsive leaps (for the clans), and karate-style acrobatics (for a woman fighting off a sexual assailant). If the plot derives from West Side Story, the effect recalls The Rite of Spring. Peter Gabriel's world sound (from his album Passion) intensifies the atmosphere of generic primitivism, although bowls and other props identify the setting as Africa.

Francesca Harper (whose mother, Denise Jefferson, directs The Ailey School) has danced with AAADT as well as William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt, in addition to appearing on Broadway. Apex reflects these influences and also Harper's debts--the blinding light, semi-undress, and semi-intelligible language to Forsythe and Pina Bausch; the strutting and erotic posturing to Broadway; the hip-hop club dancing and political sentiments to AAADT. "Apex," reads the program note, "is dedicated to those who stand up for human dignity and freedom."

This is noble stuff, underscored by politically resonant words projected on the cyclorama. But what it has to do with Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, a fabulous dominatrix in a black-sequined bra and miniskirt, who rules the stage and its exuberant celebrants of the aerobic body beautiful, is anybody's guess. The action that follows is equally puzzling. A man dies and comes back to life (no Christ symbolism that I could see). A mike descends. Fisher-Harrell mumbles "disappeared," "expedited removal," "gang-raped," and various unintelligible phrases. Someone recites the story of Patrick McKenzie, who was refused asylum at JFK airport. The curtain falls as a young man repeats several times (in French), "I come from the Congo."

Ohad Naharin's Black Milk also goes nowhere. Commissioned by the Kibbutz Dance Company in 1984, reworked in 1992, and now set on five of the company's leading men, it opens with the cast smearing mud on their faces, bare chests, and white trousers--for a reason that unfortunately escaped me. By contrast, the constantly changing shapes, feline stretches, and imaginative use of Graham technique in Elisa Monte's Treading remain a source of pleasure. Fun, too, was Louis Falco's Caravan (1976), with its bright hanging panels by William Katz and playful, Tharpian casualness. (A cameo appearance by AAADT veteran Dudley Williams added to the fun.) Ronald K. Brown's Serving Nia (2001) and especially Grace (1999) reveal him to be the most important choreographic presence in the repertoire after Alley himself. Fluent in several African diaspora idioms, Brown uses them to explore the ecstasy of bodies intoxicated with rhythm.

FOR ALL THE TALK ABOUT CELEBRATING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF WOMEN DANCEMAKERS, THE ALLEY WOMEN ARE TRAPPED IN STEREOTYPES. They are gorgeous, sexy, and tough as nails--amazons with attitude. They use their legs like swords, slashing anything in sight and daring the audience to stop them. They leave vulnerability to the men. The latter, meanwhile, have appropriated the high, even ultra-high extensions of ballet. Gender-bending is all well and good. But in the Ailey company only men have the freedom to explore their feminine side. The women, by contrast, have to be superwomen.