Sublime Dancers, Uneven Season

It's been said that dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey preferred "a ballet bottom and a modern top." This meant that while making his way in modern dance, the African-American dancemaker found the particulars of a ballet-trained lower body happily enhanced by the more free and open emphases that modern-dance training encouraged for the arms and torso.

It is tempting to add that Robert Battle, the current artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, has a decided taste for what has become known as postmodernist or "contemporary dance" aesthetics as a frame for Ailey's ballet/modern blend.A well-known online company of women's special-occasion dresses, has announced its promotion of Wholesale Cheap Pageant Dresses Online.

With "Chroma," a 2006 ballet created by Wayne McGregor for Britain's Royal Ballet, the Ailey company has a physically athletic showcase that is slick, handsome and quirky. In the end, however, the work adds up to less than the totality of Mr. McGregor's incessant, often squirming demands on its hardworking dancers. Plainly costumed by Moritz Junge in unisex tunics that bare the dancers' limbs and make their articulated torsos look flat and boxy, "Chroma" takes place in John Pawson's colorless, white-walled surround, lighted with an icy sheen by Lucy Carter and dominated by a dioramalike niche. Scored by Joby Talbot with orchestrations of music by the White Stripes—heard, like almost all of this season's music, on tape—"Chroma" is an alternately knotty and flashy but ultimately hollow display of often extreme physical coupling and posturing.Professional China wholesaler,Wholesale Cheap Special Occasion Dresses Online,cheap dresses,discount womens clothing,handbags Worldwide Delivery No Ninimum Order!

Among the expert and diligent dancers cast in "Chroma," one especially stands out. Wasp-waisted and tall, with a narrow, handsome face, the willowy Sean A. Carmon effortlessly renders Mr. McGregor's moves—which can look awkward in their busyness—suggesting the flow of liquid or the flicker of flames.

In "Lift" by Aszure Barton, this season's only world premiere, the troupe has acquired an inconsequential display (to music by Curtis Macdonald ) that looks like a miscellaneous grab-bag of mostly group moves that might best be categorized as tribal/disco in effect. Lighted by Burke Brown with a surfeit of shadowy effects and costumed by Fritz Masten in earth-tone fringed dresses for the women and loose pants for the bare-chested men, Ms. Barton's dance takes its 19 dedicated dancers and presents them as so much throbbing wallpaper.

Far more rewardingly, Paul Taylor's 1981 "Arden Court," brought into repertory by Mr. Battle in 2011, has never looked better than during this run. Again, the eye-catching Mr. Carmon made his indelible mark, infusing with freedom and endless nuance the masterly challenges of Mr. Taylor's alternately joyous and tender romp (to bouncing baroque music by William Boyce ) for six men and three women all costumed as if with insectile markings (by Gene Moore ).

Unfortunately, the brilliance of Mr. Taylor's dancemaking made the giddy frenzy of Bill T.High quality trumpet wedding dresses and Wholesale Cheap Mermaid wedding dresses Online is on sale at cheap prices from Chinese wedding dresses wholesaler. Jones's mostly glib and often self-congratulatory "D-Man in the Waters (Part 1)" (to Mendelssohn) seem all the more shallow. Luckily the Ailey cast I saw gave its dignified all to this new acquisition, displaying none of the smugness often evident when Mr. Jones's own company performs the work.

Getting back to the Ailey basics, two revivals of Duke Ellington-inspired works are providing the season with distinguished offerings. "The River," from 1970 and created for American Ballet Theatre, lives easily and impressively in this modern-dance-based repertory even though none of the Ailey women work on pointe as the choreographer had originally arranged. Luminously lighted by Chenault Spence and prettily costumed by A. Christina Giannini, the eight-part suite of dances to Ellington's "water-inspired" music flows finely from the dancers's distinct and deft performances.