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Tomorrow’s Hopes

There’s not a whole lot that’s new in this programme of new works from Alvin Ailey, which I mean in the best way possible. The bill turns on the signature swirl of passion, spirituality and poise that’s carried this company through from its mid-century foundations to its current era under artistic director Alicia Graf Mack. The night’s dancing is gracefully delivered and graciously received. As ever, it rounds off with “Revelations,” Ailey’s evergreen hymn to the ‘blood memories’ of life in the Black church. 

Performance

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre: “New Works”

Place

Sadler's Wells, London, UK, September 15, 2026

Words

Sara Veale

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in “Revelations” by Ailey. Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Medhi Walerski’s “Blink of an Eye” channels the Ailey legacy in the form of sculpted muscles, sloping lyricism and impeccable timing. Eight dancers trace a warren of grooves and furrows, some silken and fluent, others slanted by level changes and choppy, complicated port de bras. The variability reads like caprice, the cast sparked into new courses of movement like sparrows in flight. Peppered with long pauses and flits of redirection, the compositions start to reflect and deepen the wandering strings of the Bach score they’re set against. Mason Evans’s quick, acrobatic releases are a joy; so is the jig-sawing tack of James Gilmer, who flings his limbs and lets his body follow.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Medhi Walerski’s “Blink of an Eye.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Medhi Walerski’s “Blink of an Eye.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels” has a similar changeability to it, to fainter effect. It’s flighty yet measured, the group moving through slow promenades and stately formations against a celestial backdrop of Hallmark-style clouds. There’s something polite about all the pretty lines, even when they crook into pointed angles—elbows, knees, scooping arms and pitched arabesques. The reach for the heavenly is there, but I wanted to see more temper and more ache.

The stage is handed to Yannick Lebrun for Jamar Roberts’s “Song of the Anchorite,” a spartan solo that speaks to penitence and a fraught inner life. Light and wisps of smoke feather through the branches of a large, spindly tree. A reworking of Ravel’s Adagio sprinkles in soft horns and plucking double bass. Lebrun reaches, kneels and prostrates, travelling the slews of the music, which wends through notes of dread, longing and assent. Eventually he puts on a green robe, signalling a shift towards something like serenity, his body balanced after so many diverging registers. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

The jazz components of “A Case of You,” created by Judith Jamison and set to a cover of the like-titled song by Joni Mitchell, are far zippier: purple smoke, cherry-red get-ups, bursts of desire and hunger given outlets in outstretched hands and skittering legs. Caroline T Dartey and Christopher Taylor are sleek and sultry as they reach for each other, lovers on the fritz, although the music weighs their romp down, insisting on their magnetism and leaving the pair less room to reveal this themselves. There’s also a dated quality to all the downcast eyes and reaches into the distance. The piece finds its best energy in its unexpected moments: Dartley’s arresting jump onto Taylor’s thighs and the fleet, torrid spins that erupt during one of her later solos.

Cut to the old-school hallmarks of “Revelations”—the many-armed opening pyramid, the springing leaps of praise and rip-roaring contractions compelled by gospel hymns and holy blues, all of which blaze with staying power. Talk about a torch to be carried! Its sizzling swing between shades and tenors careens us through crucifix poses, desperate lunges, jubilant hip swivels and long-limbed, body-rocking processions. It’s heart and soul and everything else that endures when you greet your own grief and surrender to the promise of tomorrow.

Sara Beale


Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor. She's a member of the UK Dance Critics' Circle and has written about dance for the Observer, the Spectator, Harper's Bazaar, Auditorium, Gramophone and more. Her book, Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance, was published by Faber in 2025.

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