The New York City Center’s 2024 Season is a poignant tribute to the life and legacy of Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison, featuring beloved classics, world premieres, and new productions that evoke the spirit of dance as an offering and celebration of life.
Ailey’s Angels: A Tribute to Judith Jamison
The New York City Center 2024 Season is a poignant tribute to the life and legacy of Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison, who passed away on November 9, 2023. The season is dedicated to her memory and features beloved classics, world premieres, and new productions that evoke the spirit of dance as an offering and celebration of life.
Finding Free
One of the standout pieces of the evening was Finding Free, a contemporary work choreographed by Alonzo King’s former student, Alonzo King. The piece is set to a jazzy, gospel-inspired score by Whitaker and features stunning costumes designed by Crawford. While the narrative arc of the piece was unclear, the movement language was spare yet evocative, particularly in the solo performed by Green.
The piece explores themes of freedom and constraint, with dancers attached to ropes that they struggle to break free from. The choreography is disjointed at times, but the overall effect is one of atmospheric tension and release. Finding Free is a work in progress, and I look forward to seeing it again in the future when it has found its footing.
Many Angels
Another highlight of the evening was Many Angels, a world premiere choreographed by Lar Lubovitch for the Company. The piece is set to Gustav Mahler‘s soaring “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5 and inspired by an impossible question posed by St. Thomas Aquinas: “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
The curtain rises on a backdrop of clouds shot through with heavenly light, which elicited actual ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the audience. The piece is full of Michelangelo-esque moments, with dancers dressed in pale sheer material spinning and gliding around each other with curved arms and pointed feet.
However, just when it threatens to become monotonous, Yannick Lebrun raises Jacquelin Harris onto his shoulder, her face lifted and chest open to the sky. The other dancers back up in awe, and we realize that she is the angel – the answer to Aquinas’s question is one, but also many.
The evening closed with the 25th-anniversary production of Brown’s Grace, created for the Company in 1999. The work is about the journey to the promised land and the grace that is all around us. While the Company got a chance to show off their impressive range through Boykin’s contemporary movement-language and Lubovitch’s balletic modern technique, they seemed most at ease.
Brown’s mix of Modern dance and West African idioms is like home for the performers, and the joyous music was much needed. From the moment Constance Stamatiou walks onto the bright blue stage and begins her solo, a low undulating blessing of sorts, we know we are in for a spiritual experience.
The dancers danced their hearts and souls out, ending in a glistening sweat. Here is dance as an offering, as a celebration of life and death and everything in between. During the well-deserved standing ovation, I thought, “What can’t they do?” But after I left, it was the women I kept thinking of: the angels Ailey had gathered together that evening – Green, Harris, and Stamatiou – and Jamison shining through them.
In the end, Ailey’s Angels is a testament to the power of dance to transcend mortality and connect us with something greater than ourselves.
