Ailey in a Class All His Own

Like Balanchine at New York City Ballet and Ashton at the Royal Ballet, Alvin Ailey is irreplaceable at the company in custody of his masterworks. Put his “Revelations” and “Cry” on a program and nearly anybody else’s pieces prove insufficient. Or worse.

New proof: a four-part program given Tuesday by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on the opening night of its weeklong engagement at the Wiltern Theatre. “Revelations” looked even better than it had six days earlier in Cerritos--partly due to upgraded casting in the “Wade in the Water” sequence (Bernard Gaddis in particular) and “Sinner Man” trio (Matthew Rushing in the central solo).

Except for the somewhat muted finale, Nasha Thomas gave “Cry” all the emotional force it needed but also took great care in articulating the details of Ailey’s movement design. As a result, this 1971 solo never seemed like an acting exercise pretending to be choreography and it brought three very different kinds of music together in a unified statement about black womanhood.

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s 1988 “Shelter” sextet used to tackle the same subject but has become a big hit recently when recast with some of the company’s powerhouse men: Gaddis, Rushing, Uri Sands, Michael Thomas, Troy Powell and Michael Joy.

Using a text by Hattie Gossett and music by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, it starts off as a gritty, bitter theater piece about the homeless (male homeless in the new version). However, credibility still disintegrates when it abruptly becomes a hard-sell showpiece--and then suddenly switches into a plea for “endangered species.” Zollar has a genuine talent for nonverbal drama, but she can’t even approach Ailey’s genius for making dance virtuosity inherently expressive.

Even more problematic: “Polish Pieces,” a 1995 ensemble work by Hans van Manen, a Dutch choreographer who will also be showcased locally this season by Nederlands Dans Theater 2 and 3. As usual, he chooses intense music (in this case by Gorecki) but subordinates emotion to formalism, making the dancers into a kind of metronome, twitching and twisting in time to the counts.

The overload of brief, arbitrary phrases going nowhere lessens somewhat in a duet for Don Bellamy and Linda-Denise Evans--and, even more so, in the one for Mucuy Bolles and Gaddis. These dancers bring great concentration and integrity to the work, but it uses them only as puppets, something Alvin A. would never do.

* The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs different mixed bills tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd. $13-$40. (310) 825-2101.