Dance Reviews : Glorious Wiltern Finale for Alvin Ailey Company

The final Alvin Ailey program of the season at the Wiltern Theatre Sunday afternoon was one of those occasions when just about everything seemed glorious--the dancing, the choreography, even the die-hard fervor of the audience.

Donald McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder” was performed with an urgency that belied its 31 years. Its simple strength derives from stark movements set to the compelling rhythmic pulse of folk songs arranged by Robert de Cormier and Milton Okun.

Five men on a chain gang twist their bodies at the same pained angle, tense their necks and clasp their hands behind their back. The same clasping gesture performed by a jigging boy (Aubrey Lynch II) who goes courting becomes the hallmark of eager shyness. His life as a free man is a counterpoint to the unison moves of the prisoners.

As the boy grown to manhood, Desmond Richardson was a driven figure in the duet with his wife (Elizabeth Roxas), who comforts him when--obsessed by inner demons--his gaze curdles and his arms flail. But free black men are not long for this world, and death comes in a gunshot.

The company also imbued the signature reach-and-grasp movements and the whiplash turns in excerpts from Ailey’s “Blues Suite” with a suave and frisky good humor. The 1958 piece, to traditional songs, is about how people survive through a complex network of social interactions, a favorite Ailey theme.

Marilyn Banks as the proud and bitter woman and Gary DeLoatch as the swaggering guy who knows how to prey on weakness offered superb timing and emotional presence in the down-and-dirty “Backwater Blues” section.

The only major disappointment in a program that also included Ailey’s “Revelations” (previously reviewed) was Renee Robinson in Ailey’s “Cry.” Robinson has the moves down, especially the cut-loose flamboyance of the final section, but she doesn’t convey the suffering and surviving that are also integral to the role.