Review: New Works – Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in London
Graham Watts sees the first programme from the “world’s elite dance phenomenon”, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, on tour in London.
| Title | New Works |
| Company | Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater |
| Venue | Sadler’s Wells, London |
| Date | 15 September 2026 |
| Reviewer | Graham Watts |
Ailey in Autumn has become a regular Sadler’s Wells tradition. They have been coming since 1970, and since Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of those companies that excel without fail, they’re as welcome as the auburn autumn leaves.
This is their first visit to the UK under the direction of Alicia Graf Mack, just the fourth artistic director in almost 70 years, a consistency of leadership that has kept true to the principles of the company’s legendary founder (Alvin Ailey died, aged just 58, in 1989), especially as a repertory company that holds dear the work of Ailey, but always showcasing it alongside a conveyor belt of new work.
That strategy is faithfully represented in the two programmes of this brief season at Sadler’s Wells, beginning with this collection of New Works, to be followed by a group of Legacy works (all but one of which was created by Ailey himself). As with virtually every company performance, both shows are rounded off by Ailey’s signature work, Revelations.
The contrast between the first and last piece on this programme could not have been greater. Where Revelations has a strong case to be proclaimed the greatest curtain closer ever, guaranteed to make an audience feel uplifted, Medhi Walerski’s Blink of an Eye was frothy modern dance of no great consequence. There was nothing to dislike, but the stated theme of the ‘fragile boundary between presence and absence’ was not the stuff to heighten emotion.
The beginning had a line of eight dancers, arms to the side and elbows extended outwards, in dusky low light, but no sooner had visibility improved to allow the octet to be registered, seven of them disappeared to leave a soloist behind. This same device was repeated twice more, but thankfully it didn’t become a routine leitmotif.
The work also challenged musicality by being performed to a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing a selection of Bach’s greatest hits. There was, in the mix, a pleasing male/female duet and some interesting moments where two female dancers squared off against each other. The performance finished where it had begun with that line of eight dancers (men bare-chested, women bare-legged).
Jamar Roberts’ solo, Song of the Anchorite, brought an emotional intensity that was lacking in the earlier work. Bare desiccated branches of a dead tree crowded the space like the tentacles of a giant sea creature, under which Yannick Lebrun (a company stalwart for nearly two decades) performed a yearning solo. The jazz trumpet interpretation of a Ravel adagio was in significant contrast to the violin of the earlier work, with the earthiness of Lebrun’s movement matched by more discordant music when the piano joined the trumpet.
As an infant, I firmly believed that angels lived in the clouds, and I’m guessing that Lar Lubovitch did so too since his Many Angels piece was performed to a backdrop of clouds, rather like the opening titles of a Simpsons show, with five ethereal dancers performing elegiac, often conjoined, movement, appearing like figures from Greek mythology in their translucent costumes. Here again, music set the mood, with the dancers beautifully interpreting the adagio from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in luscious, svelte choreography that Lubovitch has said is not really about angels. I don’t believe him because he has made me reconnect to a feeling that perhaps they do live on clouds, just invisibly.
Judith Jamison led the company for 21 years after Ailey’s death, and the second act concluded with an excerpt of her 2005 piece, Reminiscin’, re-released in 2025 as a stand-alone duet, entitled A Case of You, which was superbly danced by Caroline T. Darty and Christopher Taylor, perfectly in tune with one another, starting in silence and then moving in sensual harmony to a recording of Diana Krall singing Joni Mitchell’s classic song. One had the impression of a couple returning home after enjoying a night on the town, continuing that sentimental intensity through thrilling choreography, not least in a trio of innovative lifts, one of which had Darty jumping to stand on Taylor’s bent thighs.
And so, inevitably to Revelations, easily the most performed work of modern dance, and always anticipated with huge expectations that are never disappointed. It is Ailey’s masterclass in matching meaningful movement to music in the ten African American gospel, spiritual and blues songs that convey every emotion from sorrow, through faith, to flight and finally joy. The dancers are terrific, exuding a palpable love for this cherished work and in an age where technology provides the platform for incredible visual spectacle, it is something wonderful that two lengths of silk, held across the stage and waved up and down can assimilate the baptismal river of Wade in the Water.
I don’t know when the Ailey ensemble arrived from over the pond, but I’m guessing that commercial considerations meant that they hadn’t been in London for long and there was perhaps an edge of fatigue in the final rousing number of Rocka My Soul and its inevitable encore. But even at 95% this was dance to make one feel excited. The Ailey company is unquestionably one of the world’s elite dance phenomena, and already I can’t wait for them to come back soon.
Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA). He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.
He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv. He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.
