Over her 20-odd years as director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Judith Jamison has proved an exceptionally charismatic and inspirational figurehead, and has kept the chiefly African-American company steaming proudly ahead. But the troupe’s new works have often been unworthy of its wonderful dancers – imagine magnificent racehorses charged with ferrying children around a beach, and you get some idea. And her 1993 piece, Hymn, which launches their second programme of work at Sadler’s Wells this month, sadly strays into this category.
At once a tribute to the late Ailey and company mission-statement, this collaboration with actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith is passionate, personal, grandly conceived, and somehow just not at all exciting. The particularly African-influenced ensembles that top-and-tail it have a certain energy, one or two of the intervening solos a certain elegance. But there is little originality in the movement-quality (or, for that matter, Robert Ruggieri’s mainly percussive score), and the whole affair is weighed down by relentless voiceovers. A time-passer only, regrettably.
How different Anointed, which follows. Created this year by former company dancer Christopher L Huggins, this three-parter tries less self-consciously to embody the AAADT qualities of athleticism, sensuousness and cultural inclusivity, and yet succeeds so much better.
