There are occasions as a dance lover when one’s greatest pleasure comes not from the brilliance of the choreography or the splendour of the music, but from the sheer delight of watching highly trained dancers doing something that you could only dream of doing. So it is with this touring programme from the acclaimed Ailey 2 dance company, the younger sibling of New York City’s world-renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Ailey’s famous combination of social outreach and intensive dance training has created a young company of extraordinary physical virtuosity. In a change from the brochure, Glasgow was offered the second of the company’s two current performance programmes. Not that there were any complaints about the show opening with Troy Powell’s The External Knot, a series of pieces danced to the music of Philip Glass and Robert Schumann.
The work is particularly well suited to a young company, as it both demands great feats of delicacy and youthful strength, and also showcases dancers singularly, in pairs and as an ensemble. The collective element is at its most impressive in the concluding section, danced with breathtaking energy, synchronicity and flamboyant, organised chaos to Glass’s dramatic Funeral of Amenhotep III.
