Ailey dancers offer timeless show

The company known as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has outlived its founder now by almost 20 years, yet it is no insult to Ailey's hand-chosen successor, the redoubtable Judith Jamison, to suggest that the troupe is still faithful to his spirit. It was in town this weekend — it is almost always in one town or another, having danced throughout the world and in all but two of the 50 states — and Galliard Municipal Auditorium was filled to capacity Sunday afternoon with an audience that came to cheer.

Setting aside its valuable educational outreach programs, the Ailey company presently calls to mind the dance world equivalent of an oldies band. People come to see and hear the works that they loved when they were younger, while introducing new generations to them in turn. None of the pieces on the program were less than 38 years old and the creation universally hailed as Ailey's masterpiece — "Revelations" - will turn 50 next year.

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For me, the least interesting work was "Blues Suite" (1958), set to a collection of vintage roadhouse R & B numbers by the late Brother John Sellers. One of Ailey's first dances, it has been restaged by Masazumi Chaya, yet seems rather drab and ordinary, despite the supple movements of the superb dancers. The most agreeable section here was a rendition of "House of the Rising Sun," which for once identifies the writhing prostitutes as the real societal victims, rather than the usual (and improbable) "poor boy" who does nothing more than sample their wares. Courtney Brene Corbin, Khilea Douglass and Roxanne Lyst brought a leonine queenliness to their wriggling.

There is a bar in Los Angeles that limits its playlist to songs that anybody past the age of 25 has probably heard 1,000 times or more. Only one selection seems to be allowed per artist and so the Doors are represented by "Light My Fire," Procol Harum never made another record after "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and Rod Stewart apparently sang only about Maggie May.

Otis Redding, of course, is always "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," his great atypical (and posthumous) hit. Now there's nothing wrong with this song: it isn't a betrayal of Redding's talent (did you know that Chuck Berry's only number-one hit was the loathsome "Ding-a-Ling"?) Still, Redding made so many other terrific records that I was grateful that "Suite Otis" — a tribute choreographed by George Faison in 1971 — included only the brief whistled coda from "Bay" and concentrated instead on "Just One More Day," "Can't Turn You Loose," "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and a spirited soulful cover of "Satisfaction," among others, in its stead. What an extraordinary talent Redding was! His death, in a plane crash at the age of 26, was an artistic calamity — and Faison paid high tribute to his jubilant spirit.

And then it was time for "Revelations," the setting of ten spirituals that made Ailey's name. How arresting this must have seemed in 1960 - early in the Civil Rights movement, the era of James Baldwin, sit-ins and "Raisin in the Sun" — and it remains beautiful and powerful today. One need no more buy into its wide-eyed religionism — its palpable and oft-stated conviction that we are all sinners in need of prayer and redemption and souls a-rocked in the bosom of Abraham — than one need be a gun-shy deer to respond viscerally to "Bambi." The music teems with life, and Guillermo Asca made rolling on one's stomach seem as precious a contribution to the language of dance as any pas de deux.

I do wish that the opening filmed tribute to Ailey and Jamison could have been trimmed. The historical footage was engaging, but it came to seem little more than a slick, platitudinous fundraising commercial after a few minutes.