Let the good times roll

For a regular dancegoer in New York City, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater seasons arrive with the comforting predictability of a Christmas Nutcracker. Superb dancers, Ailey’s sublime Revelations, jubilant audiences, stirring evocations of African-American identity: it’s easy to begin to take these things for granted.

When you haven’t seen the Ailey company for a while, a season packed with these riveting dancers is a newly wondrous thing, a fresh discovery of the particularity that makes the troupe both a cultural and historic phenomenon. The company’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre season, which opened on the 6 September and runs through to the 17th, is the start of a six-week UK tour. Nine works are on show, representing both heritage —Ailey’s Revelations, the repertory cornerstone, ends every programme — and new works commissioned or acquired since Robert Battle became the artistic director in 2011.

Ailey, born in rural Texas in 1931, founded his company in New York in 1958, a conspicuous act of bravery and optimism. From Blues Suite, his first work for his new ensemble, he made a claim for the experience of black Americans as a source of creative and spiritual energy. Revelations, which followed in 1960, didn’t just cement that claim; it happened to be a masterpiece that effectively secured the future of his company beyond his early death in 1989.

Set to spirituals and gospel music, Revelations is a communal journey from baptism through sin, despair, longing and salvation, and it resonates with an unquenchable spirit and an irresistible dance impulse that audiences adore without fail. It’s almost impervious to casting; I saw different sets of dancers in the Revelations solo roles over the three London programmes, and despite the odd standout moment (Jeroboam Bozeman in ‘Sinner Man’, Akua Noni Parker in ‘Wade in the Water’), it didn’t matter much.