Ailey Troupe Gleams in Vintage Settings

With good choreography, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancers sparkle like polished gems and convince like truly great communicators. In lesser works, they still manage to be moving--and so impressive, you want to start petitions for national treasure status.

At the top of that list would be Matthew Rushing, the L.A. native who made good so many times on the company’s third program Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He doesn’t need a key to the city--all the locks would simply melt for him.

So when the all-Ailey program started to lag during “Phases” (1980), a kind of run-on sentence about awakening (endless breathy stretches, reaching for the sun) and warming up to life (great hip swiveling sections in dappled light), Rushing came to the rescue with startlingly vivid lines, godlike semaphore and a riveting presence that seemed solid and liquid at the same time.

In “Pas de Duke,” the 1976 duet that Ailey made for Judith Jamison and Mikhail Baryshnikov (named for the taped selections of Duke Ellington music), Rushing shared honors with an equally sizzling Linda-Denise Evans. The original was a friendly duel between the modern and ballet worlds, but here, Rushing and Evans simply eyed each other in a general atmosphere of daring and sass. At first, Rushing stood out, with his white satin suit, impossibly airy leaps and controlled turns. But then Evans, in black satin, took over, with mobile hips in elegant prances, arms like a swan with attitude, and legs that flew so fast and so high, she might have put an eye out with her knee at one point.

Rushing provided another dance rush in his “Revelations” solo, “I Wanna Be Ready,” in which he married controlled power to soulful striving. Not to be outdone, Clifton Brown danced the heck out of a “Sinner Man” solo that Rushing often aces. Briana Reed and Amos J. Machanic Jr. brought ineffable emotion and grace to “Fix Me, Jesus.”

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Other impressive duets dotted the evening: In Ailey’s “Blues Suite” (1958), a barrelhouse romp that seems tame today, Renee Robinson and Glenn A. Sims engaged in an amusing power-strutting struggle. And in “Phases,” Ddwana Adiaha Smallwood and Troy O’Neil Powell skittered in gloriously quirky detail.

“Blues Suite” and “Revelations” also had the advantage of featuring Dudley Williams, who joined the company in 1964. You do the math. In the forest of young and amazing bodies, it was great to see an older version of youthfulness onstage as well.