Nothing sings and shimmies like Alvin Ailey

Hit them with your best shot? Or save the best till last? Almost 30 years after Alvin Ailey’s death in 1989, his dance company still ends every night with Revelations, an autobiography in ballet and gospel music.  First danced in 1960, and presented at Olympic opening ceremonies and presidential inaugurations, Revelations remains an electrifying piece. Ailey’s gift was to borrow elements of African, Asian and Native American dance and set them to a score of traditional spirituals and gospel rock. On the strength of this bill — the second of three programmes the troupe is performing at Sadler’s Wells — his successors have yet to make anything that sings and shimmies with anything like Ailey’s inventive energy.

The first three acts are slack. The opener EN, choreographed by Jessica Lang and first performed in New York last year, is elegant enough. The beginning is something like a sun dance to a soundtrack of war drums and clicking, trilling typewriter ribbons. In their ivory outfits (shame about the putty gym knickers), the 13 dancers are played upon like piano keys. As they are struck and released it is as if God’s hand were practising chords. There is something mechanical, almost steampunk, to the choreography: legs tick like minute hands, female dancers spin like mobiles from their partner’s arms, each cog fits the next in the sequence. The climax sees the dancers turn the stage into something between a maypole and a mandala.

The Call, says choreographer Ronald K. Brown, was created as ‘a love letter to Mr Ailey’. It’s Strictly Ballroom meets New York speakeasy as a quintet in smooth suits and satin skirts meet to jitter and jive. The men roll hula-hoop hips, the women swish and swoon and sway.