Take Me to Church

On December 11^th, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presented two premieres and two dances that had premiered just a week prior. The evening closed with a company classic, Ronald K. Brown’s “Grace”—a hedge, perhaps, in case the quartet of new ballets did not sufficiently deliver on the spirit of the troupe during its important, annual December residency at City Center. I am always happy to watch “Grace,” and it was the strongest number on the program, yet all four new pieces demonstrated the company’s ethos and showcased dancing at the highest level. I did not get to see Maija Garcia’s “Jazz Island,” the season’s other premiere, but for four out of five new works to be enjoyable and complementary to the repertory is terrifically lucky. Alicia Graf Mack’s first season as artistic director has started off strong.

Performance

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Place

New York City Center, New York, NY, December 11, 2025

Words

Faye Arthurs

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Matthew Neenan's “Difference Between.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

The show began with Medhi Walerski’s “Blink of an Eye,” set to Bach’s popular “Partitas for Solo Violin.” In addition to the familiar music, the dance featured several contemporary dance fads: dark lighting, plain black costumes (by Walerski as well), topless men in pants, slides in socks, fidgeting in lunges, and a lighting boom that rose and lowered. And yet, somehow it wasn’t as much of a drag as many ballets that employ the same tactics. The eight talented and committed Ailey dancers—especially Ashley Kaylynn Green, Isaiah Day, and Jesse Obremski—made it exciting. They sailed through the hooking lifts and counter-weighted partnering. They swiveled and flicked their limbs with pleasing fluidity. Walerski’s overall pacing was fluid too, with the cast meeting in a chorus line or a circle to repeat an arcing relevé as their arms rose, winglike. This motif, a spiritual inhale, acted as a reset before they tore into each new round of flurried movement.

After a pause, former Ailey muse and artistic director Judith Jamison’s 2004 pas de deux, “A Case of You,” was resurrected. Like “Blink of an Eye,” this duet was not groundbreaking, but it was a very well-executed iteration of a classic trope. The superb duo Jacquelin Harris (who had an exhausting night) and Yannick Lebrun starred as a couple intimately working through stages of distance and desire. They nicely matched Diana Krall’s husky, sometimes reticent cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” through their seesawing emotional intensity.

The dance was further elevated by the intuitive crowd’s responses. An appreciative murmur rippled through the house when Harris ran and jumped at Lebrun’s torso, clamping herself to him through sheer leg strength (he remained impassive). Later, when she flew and landed in a standing position on his thighs there was a collective gasp. These are flashy examples, but there were reactions to subtler finessed moments too. I find the Ailey audiences to be always so engaged and knowing.

Former Ailey dancers Alicia Graf Mack and Jamar Roberts in Judith Jamisons “Reminiscin' (A Case of You excerpt.)” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Following the first intermission, the two newborn dances made for an even stronger segment. Matthew Neenan’s impressive “Difference Between” was set to the unique liturgical/classical/pop fusion of 2025 MacArthur Fellow Heather Christian. The complex choral numbers, performed by Christian and her band, the Arbornauts, were refracted by Neenan’s stellar septet, all clad in blue separates with orange accents (by Karen Young) in front of colorful, changing cycloramas (by Brandon Stirling Baker). To Christian’s cyclic chants, the dancers switched lines and reorganized in intricate patterns while maintaining tight unison in their fleet footwork and fast arm moves. It was like looking at a stained-glass window through a kaleidoscope. I liked a speedy en dedans port de bras motif that accompanied triplet chugs, one arm at a time. Done slower, this gesture would read as an invitation to dance. It was often set to tambourine accents in the score, stressing its communal bent.

Green, Harris, and Obremski were back and shining. But Patrick Coker and Shawn Cusseaux stole the show in their swinging, fraught “Holy Roller” duet. In this dance, Neenan enhanced the lyrics through movement—a rare feat that usually only Kyle Abraham pulls off. The way the men hit the “holy roller” refrain in the chorus with a heavy strut, heads thrown back, feet dragging and shoulders rolling was so good. I immediately tried to play that song after the show to remember their grooving yet alas, it’s nowhere to be found online. To hear that unreleased track is reason enough to go see “Difference Between,” which runs until January 4th.

Donnie Duncan Jr in Jamar Roberts's “Song of the Anchorite.” Photograph by Paul Kolnik

Next, Jamar Roberts’s “Song of the Anchorite” solo traded the profane for the sacred. This ode to Ailey was based on his 1961 solo “Hermit Songs,” which hasn’t been performed by the company since the ’90s. In pictures, Ailey held thorny branches, which were referenced in an overhead tree projection by Joseph Anthony Gaito in “Anchorite.” Donnie Duncan Jr. sat underneath the canopy to begin as smoke filtered onto the stage. He scooted backwards towards the audience on his rear to the sounds of trumpet and guitar in the score, a jazzified version of the adagio from Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G Major” as performed by Avishai Cohen, Yonathan Avishai, Barak Mori, and Ziv Ravitz. (Ailey’s “Hermit Songs” had been set to Samuel Barber, interestingly.)

In baggy brown pants with more strips of fabric girding his torso (by Roberts and Jon Taylor), Duncan Jr. deftly coordinated penitent arms (crossed wrists, fists pounding the floor, raised palms, stomach stabbing, clasped hands, one hand smacking away the other) with Roberts’s signature undulations. Roberts, a company alum, knows how to link physical prowess and spirituality. Between Bach and monks, holy rollers and the ghosts of Ailey and Jamison, it was a moving night of movement. “Grace” brilliantly drove the point home, connecting the sweaty gyrations of a night at the club with holy baptism.

Faye Arthurs

Faye Arthurs is a former ballet dancer with New York City Ballet. She chronicled her time as a professional dancer in her blog Thoughts from the Paint. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Fordham University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their sons.

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