With its golden jubilee already celebrated, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre – to give its full title – is a much-loved and much-lauded ensemble, and vastly popular. What distinguishes its performances is that vividly communicated enthusiasm for dancing, whole-hearted, whole-bodied, that has ever marked African-American dance. So it proved again on Tuesday night when the troupe returned for a season at Sadler’s Wells.
I remember the company’s debuts here in the 1960s and the delight we found in just such artistry. Perhaps the performances then were something less polished when its signature work Revelations was freshly made and the company’s ethos was necessarily more assertive, than we see now. But the power of the movement, its depth of feeling and commitment seem unchanged, and in this lies the strength of its identity.
