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Inside the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble
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15922 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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7 / 1989 |
2,201 Words |
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Maya Wallach
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The Alvin Ailey Repertory Theater is a professional dance company acclaimed in tours from New England to Ohio to the Caribbean, yet its first goal is to prepare its members for a career in dance, and it teaches its lessons the hard way.
Alvin Ailey formed the repertory ensemble in 1974 as a place for the most talented students of the Ailey School to experience firsthand the pleasures and pitfalls of dancing and touring full time. The schedule and repertory are as demanding as those of his primary company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), although the venues are smaller.
Still, it would be misleading to say the repertory ensemble dancers feel any less pressure. Personal commitment and ambition spur dancers more forcefully than any audience or critic, and AARE dancers are--if anything--more obsessed and consumed by their career than are older, more seasoned dancers.
The director of the company, Sylvia Waters, a former Ailey dancer herself, understands firsthand the fragility of the dancer's world. She never thought of leading a company until Ailey invited her to direct the fledgling AARE in 1974. "I was appalled, initially," she remembered, but it took her only twenty-four hours to decide that it might be a good match. Fifteen good years have proved her correct.
Creative Organizer
Unlike Ailey and many other artistic directors, Waters is neither choreographer or teacher. She is an organizer: Waters selects talented dancers and choreographers and gives them the time, space, and money to create dances. Although she watches over the proceedings, she has faith in her laissez-faire approach and intrudes very little.
Waters is proud that she can use the resources of the AARE's half million-dollar budget to produce dances by choreographers who would otherwise be unable to pay dancers for regular rehearsals or afford proper lights and costumes. Even a choreographer such as Donald Byrd, who runs his own company and produces his own concerts, can benefit from the increased audiences and publicity the AARE draws. Byrd's Crumble, created for the AARE last year, led to the commissioning of Shards for the first company. The performance won international acclaim.
The repertory ensemble is an ever-changing entity. Dancers can stay a maximum of three years, and the repertory is replenished with new works annually. Where last year the company expressed its strength in dramatic works choreographed by Judith Jamison, Donald Byrd, and Kevin Wynn, this year's premieres--created for a younger company that included nine new dancers--were gentler corps dances by Ralph Lemon and Takako Asakawa.
Waters enjoys the unpredictability of her company and intuitively complements the new works with older favorites that both balance an evening's performance and broaden her dancer's experience. Recognizing the strength and lyricism of her male dancers prompted her to revive a solo Ailey created in 1962, Reflections in D.
Choreographed to an improvisation by Duke Ellington, Reflections calls upon its performer to improvise also--emotionally. "I can use
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