Alvin Ailey steps up the sensuality

There was color, passion, lyricism, energy and loads of talent, but what really won over a large crowd of Parisians to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater this week was something all too often overlooked amid the abstraction and intellectualism of contemporary dance.

Sexiness.

True, the French are meant to be experts in these matters. And love, sex and eroticism all parade noisily through French advertising, literature and movies. Yet on Tuesday, with the first of five programs being presented here through July 22, the Ailey dancers offered Parisians a fresh definition of sensuality in motion.

No doubt it helped that this week's program revolves around jazz.

So amid lifts, leaps, spins and arabesques, there was jive, mambo, merengue and more. Put differently, on display was modern classical dance with wiggles galore.

While no stranger to Paris, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is the guest company for the second edition of a new summer festival called Les Etes de la Danse de Paris. Last year's featured company, the San Francisco Ballet, proved an immense success. Now Alvin Ailey is offering a quite different look at American dance today.

For some years now dance has probably been America's most appreciated cultural export to France. Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs all have huge followings here. And with 20,000 people attending the San Francisco Ballet performances last year, the stage was set to welcome the Ailey troupe this month.

For this festival, a provisional covered stage has again been built in the stately gardens of the Hotels de Rohan-Soubise, the 18th-century home of the National Archives. After unseasonably bad weather last year, a transparent plastic roof now covers bleachers with seats for 2,000. But so far the weather has been dry, at least during performances.

The Ailey tour began Monday with a charity gala, which included a number of short pieces and extracts as well as a performance of Ailey's best-known work, "Revelations." The four main programs have been organized around themes: "Around Jazz," "Best of 1 and 2" and "Homage to Alvin Ailey."

"The French organizers came up with the names," Judith Jamison, the company's artistic director, said in an interview. "They think it sells better that way, as a sort of package. But for us they are just evenings, much as we present them at City Center in New York."

That said, with 18 performances including 20 different works, the 29 dancers here will be kept busy. And on their Sundays off, the stage at the Hotels de Rohan-Soubise will be used for a hip-hop show presented by a French group, Pas de Quartier.

"Around Jazz" opens with a 1970 work by Ailey, "The River," his interpretation of Duke Ellington's composition of the same name, a lyrical expression of a river's progress from "Spring" to "Twin Cities." At various stages of its eight-episode journey, the 31- minute work mobilizes 26 dancers, but the pace also constantly changes, from the exuberance of "Spring" to the seduction of "Meander," the joyful leaps of "Giggling Rapids" and the solo spins of "Vortex."

Yet if "The River" already had the audience on its feet applauding, the next work, Ailey's "Cry" from 1971, presented magically here by Dwana Adiaha Smallwood in a flowing white dress, had a still more powerful emotional impact.

Performed to music by Alice Coltrane, Laura Nyro and Chuck Griffin, the 16-minute solo opens with an intensity that evokes an African dance or even a Brazilian Candomble ritual. In a second section, accompanied by a mournful saxophone, Smallwood seems close to tears, before finally erupting with energy to the beat of something resembling soul music. She was given a long standing ovation.

Ailey's "Pas de Duke," to music by Duke Ellington, which was first performed in 1971 by Jamison and Mikhail Baryshnikov, was presented here by Linda Celeste Sims and Matthew Rushing and immediately raised the erotic temperature. It includes solos and duos and is unapologetically raunchy while at the same time demanding extraordinary timing and physicality. But with its swirling hips and flashing eyes it was the evening's final work, Billy Wilson's "Winter in Lisbon" (1992) to music by Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Fishman, that had the audience calling for, and winning, a lively encore.

Women in high heels, sparkling necklaces and party dresses create a nightclub mood, with a Latin beat inviting predatory men to flirt, woo, seduce and show off. Of course what looks like a bunch of young people having a good time involves complex and varied choreography, not least in the final section, "Manteca," when all 29 dancers are onstage. And on Tuesday, because they really were having a good time, it proved contagious in the extreme.

Next week's two "Best of... " programs will offer a broader range of works from the 200 or so in the company's repertory, including one of Jamison's pieces, "Love Stories." Then, beginning July 17, there will be six all-Ailey evenings, with a reprise of "Revelations." Altogether some 30,000 people are expected to attend the festival. But to judge from the response so far, there will be many returning for more.

"French audiences fall on either side of the fence," Jamison noted. "You're either cheered or booed." But she added with a knowing smile, "We're never booed."

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