The Brooklyn Rail

When choreographer Amy Hall Garner’s grandfather was young, big band jazz ruled. Headliners such as Count Basie, Ray Charles, and Duke Ellington took New York by storm. Inspired by her grandfather’s recent 100th birthday, Garner transports us to this time with the premiere of CENTURY.

Complementing the score of jazz greats, the outré costumes (by Susan Roemer) and gold lamé curtain (by Nicole Pearce) summon thoughts of hotspots such as the Rainbow Room, the Copacabana, and the earlier Savoy and Cotton Club. Today, Broadway and the Rockettes seem most closely related to this crowd-pleasing jazz revue.

Frankly, musical theater jazz is a square genre that hasn’t been seen in many modern dance programs in recent years; perhaps enough time has elapsed that its broad appeal has become retro-cool. It contrasts sharply with other recent Ailey commissions by Garner’s peers, such as the sangfroid of Wayne McGregor and the avant-hipness of Kyle Abraham. But it’s a stellar vehicle for the showy side of the Ailey Company, which can render any style of choreography with polish.

In CENTURY, Garner on occasion blends in subtle African dance threads and ballet. In the adrenalized first scene, the dancers wear character/jazz shoes and comport themselves as if in a cabaret, swanning across the stage, long legs scissoring. A fireman carries a woman, who extends one leg like a steeple. The lamé curtain, when brightly lit, shines to a tear-inducing level; in subsequent scenes the wattage mercifully dims. Roemer designed fuchsia and gold bustiers and feathered tutus for the women, and feather-sleeved shirts and pants for the men. It all draws maximum attention, in keeping with the unabashedly brash nature of the dance.

Later, the cast dances barefoot, providing traction and grounding the style with deeply bent knees and elastic torsos. The choreography sometimes elicits Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse’s style from Singin’ in the Rain—spidery-limbed and leading with the pelvis. A section features a hotplate sequence of spins, arches, and hops. The cast coalesces into a facsimile of a conga line, full of exuberance and raucous fun. Ornately posed hands, legs held aloft like sculptures, and witty, four-limbed crab walks emerge as signatures of Garner’s wide-ranging style.

The song list varies from big brass, to pensive piano, to clarinet and tuba-led tunes. Count Basie’s “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” energizes the finale with its broad, toe-tapping appeal. The dancers kick high and pirouette quickly in a pow-pow-pow rhythm. No surprise that the audience roared with enthusiasm. Garner is this season’s Artist in Residence at Ailey. The obligations of this new post, beyond CENTURY, remain to be seen, as do how her future commissions for Ailey will differ.

The evening also featured new productions of Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit (2009) (a tribute to Judith Jamison) and Jamar Roberts’s Ode (2019). I sometimes feel that the company looks most at home in Brown’s highly musical, sinuous, African-based style that affords more of an individual interpretation both technically and emotionally. Spirituality often drives his dances, manifesting in outright gestural exclamation, or in the fervor of ecstatic movement. (Kyle Abraham’s work, while very different, can also elicit this feeling.) It’s not so far from the combination of physical and spiritual bliss of Revelations (1960).

Six women dance Roberts’s Ode in front of a stunning floral backdrop by Libby Stadstad to a score by Don Pullen. Purportedly inspired by the beauty and evanescence of life in a time of gun violence, it contains some riveting moments—when a woman lies prone and flips in a split-second to her back, contracting into a V, or in a rapid ensemble sequence with a move for each note. At other times, it felt earnest and melodramatic, with the familiar tropes of a trust fall and a snaking chain of dancers crystallizing into a lovely tableau.

Despite the crowd’s enthusiasm, many questions hovered in the wake of Artistic Director Robert Battle’s sudden departure from Ailey for health reasons (longtime company member Matthew Rushing has stepped in for the interim). Who will replace him, and how will that person’s taste and experience guide future repertory, both old and new? As work for the company by contemporary choreographers accrues with each year, the percentage of dances created by Ailey necessarily diminishes (similarly occurring at other artist-founded companies such as Martha Graham and Paul Taylor). Are audiences hungry to see repertory by Ailey that is not Revelations, and at what cost to full houses? The company returns to BAM in June for a week, an opportunity to broaden its loyal City Center base. The repertory, yet to be announced, may offer some clues to the company’s future direction.