Tulsa

Ailey II Rocks Tulsa’s Soul

by Alicia Chesser | Feb 22, 2024 4:39 pm

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Posted to: Dance

Ailey II
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Feb. 13, 2024

“I go every December in New York; I’ve probably seen Revelations 25 times,” said the woman behind me in the Tulsa PAC restroom line.“ Since probably not many Tulsans are able to put Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater​’s City Center show on their annual calendar, the chance to catch that masterwork (the company’s signature piece, set to African American spirituals and seen globally more than any other piece of modern dance) here at home was, if you will, a revelation. 

Ailey II, the up-and-coming-talent wing of the main Ailey company since 1974, stopped at the Tulsa PAC during its national tour with a show that included Revelations, short highlights from classic AAADT works by Ailey and Judith Jamison, and a brand new piece by emerging phenoms Baye & Asa (Amadi Washington and Sam Pratt). Tulsa’s been thin on touring dance productions since the pandemic. This show reminded me what we’ve been missing. 

Founded in 1958, AAADT has become, in the words of a 2008 U.S. Congressional resolution, ​“a vital American cultural ambassador to the world,” preserving and celebrating the African American cultural experience through the art of modern dance. Ailey II’s program in Tulsa took us to the years 1958 (Blues Suite), 1960 (Revelations), 1970 (Streams), 1972 (The Lark Ascending), 1984 (Divining), and 2023 (John 4:20) — each one a window into its time and a call into the present moment. 

Performed by these strong, bold, early-career dancers, historic pieces came through with reverent and electric intensity. Before the lights even came up on stage, I glimpsed one dancer running out to take his spot already in full-throttle performance mode, his whole body alert even in the darkness. Powerful lines, deep curves of tension and release, and impossible balances met gestures with deep emotional resonance: Maggy van den Heuvel’s hand touching her throat in the ​“House of the Rising Sun” section of Blues Suite, Jaryd Farcon taking a whole journey in one place (from corpse pose to boat pose to the hoped-for heaven in his upward-twisting form) in Revelations’ famous solo ​“I Want To Be Ready.”

And it’s going to be a long time before I stop thinking about Maya Finman-Palmer’s performance of Jamison’s Divining, which captured the shapes of sky, flight, bow, and ripple, the vibrations of a string, and utter joyful power in her towering form. There were literal groans of pleasure and an out-loud ​“Alright I said!” from the audience as that piece built to its polyrhythmic climax.

Alongside its mission to carry these legacy works into the future, Ailey II is a launchpad for fresh choreography. Artistic Director Francesca Harper has her finger on the pulse of new dance, and Baye & Asa’s John 4:20 is like nothing I’ve seen on a Tulsa stage. ​“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen,” reads the Bible’s John 4:20. These choreographers focus on the reality of violence and the need for empathy — on the street, at the playground, in the world, in the heart — and this piece for six dancers is an explosive interplay of hate and love. 

Their movement language — aggressive, funny, spiky-sweet, jaw-dropping — confronts contemporary dance with the rhythms of hip-hop and African dance, as well as their own politically layered history as lifelong friends. Two women started things off in a quiet so deep that the squeak of their sneakers became, as in a basketball game, the soundtrack. One jumped up piggyback on the other; two men entered in the inverse of that form (one upside down and clinging to the other’s front). In syncopated jolts — pattycakes, handshakes, leans, pushes — the partnering piled up as a hum built underneath. Knocked down by a high-five, then rising to ​‘50s soul music, dancers flew inside hammering strobe lights, flinging limbs and sweat, before falling back under a haze and rising again to a slow ​‘70s strut. 

A thrilling solo for van den Heuvel, her hair fully out (something she said in the post-show talk that she loved), moved so fast that I felt like I was losing frames. Music by Crystal Castles and Madvillain scorched the stage between the silences. John 4:20 bristled and swayed, slapped and stuttered, conjoined and fell apart … it’s still moving in my memory, a living thing wedged between two edges, wrestling its way to light.

The TPAC Trust provided $10 tickets for this show to dancers in the community, a generous accessibility-booster that I hope they’ll repeat. The sold-out 400-seat Williams Theatre buzzed with bunheads, hip-hop dancers, belly dance practitioners — and most notably, Black kids, who saw themselves represented in dance on this local stage, by the best of the best in the world, in a way that I hope we see more of around here soon. That exuberant encore of Ailey’s ​“Rocka My Soul” the company did at the end of the night, to the cheers of a jumping-up-and-down crowd? Tulsa needed that — all of that. 

Next for Alicia: Topdog/Underdog via Theatre North

Tags: modern dance , ailey