Dance Talk

I attempted to fire up the ol' Wasp again, but the batteries have gone bad so I need to get a bunch of C batteries now. At night Mary Beth and I went up to the Orpheum for ballet. It was a production by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. They're doing a set of shows across the weekend with a different program each night. Last night's went as follows. First was Roy's Joys. It was the music of Roy Eldridge (wasn't super familiar with him, but I guess he's seen as sort of a bridge between swing and bebop, or I guess he did swing in a way that influenced the bebop guys) and the dancing was a kind of interpretation of swing dancing. Next was called Survivors and it was about Nelson Mandella and the music was by Max Roach ("Survivors" and "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace") and the music was easily the best of the lot. The dancing was very good too. Last was "Revelations" and it's apparently Alvin Ailey's most famous piece. I don't know jack about dance so I'm not at all familiar. People were all talking about it around us before it started. And seeing that it was very religious themed with the title and subtitles and names of the songs, I was a little wary of what I might think about it. But the choreography was very impressive, especially in the first section. As I said, I don't know a whole lot about dance, but I've seen a little bit and I've seen abstract dance/ballet, but this was probably what felt like the most painterly of any I'd seen, with the costume colors and grouping of the dancers and lighting. The music was all spirituals and gospel and was my least favorite, but as I said the visual portion was pretty stunning.