This past Saturday, I went with Lauren and her family to see Alvin Ailey perform at BAM. My prior experience in seeing any kind of performance dance was obviously somewhat limited – I think that other than seeing Cirque’s “O” show in Vegas, it was basically just Terps in college. As I am not a huge dance enthusiast, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The show was actually a lot of fun. Lauren and her family have been sponsoring it and attending for awhile, so they knew many of the dancers. As luck would have it, though, some of the dances performed that night were new.
I thought the first act was one of the best – the dancing was set to spoken word interviews with Alvin Ailey’s contemporaries and the current directors of the company. They talked about how the company was formed in the context of the politics and culture of the 50′s and 60′s, and it was very cool to see that translated into movement. This year is actually the 50th anniversary of their founding, and it was awesome to be able to see them (especially since they performed for Obama not too long ago).
The second act was performed entirely to Otis Redding music. Otis Redding is awesome. Enough said.
The last act was called Revelations, and is the company’s signature piece. From Wikipedia: “Revelations tells the story of African-American faith and tenacity from slavery to freedom through a suite of dances set to spirituals and blues music.” This was a very spiritual part of the show, and clearly had the most feeling, but I didn’t think the actual dancing was as completely interesting as the other acts. The final sections, including a dance called “Sinner Man,” were very powerful and performed with a lot of energy, but for a non-enthusiast like myself some of the other sections were less interesting to me (dance-wise, not story-wise).
Either way, I did actually enjoy it, and would see the show again, perhaps even if it weren’t on a lengthy personal development list.
As is my nature, the most meaningful part of the evening for me was dinner. We walked around Ft. Greene for awhile and stumbled upon a place called Rice (166 Dekalb Ave. in Ft. Greene). The menu had a lot of Indian and Thai influence and the food was incredible. I got pad thai because it was too late at night to be creative, but people also ordered the jerk chicken wings, Mexican chicken soup and obviously all kinds of rice. The food was very fresh, well prepared and I definitely plan on going back to either that location or one of their four others.
Overall, it was a very good night, and another thing crossed off the list.
