the early bird special

Last night Katie took me as her special guest to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Company at the Paramount. I was thankful once again to the lovely people at Seattlest for being a big deal, because our tickets were phenomenal. Row F center aisle seats - the last time I was so close to the stage at the Paramount was when Belle & Sebastian was supporting The Life Pursuit and Kim and I had to flirt with awkward Canadian boys to fight our way forward in the crowd. Even then we were all the way off to stage left. So walking in last night, I felt pretty fancy, despite knowing little to nothing about modern dance. My formal dance experience begins and ends with an adult beginning ballet class, an unsuccessful foray into Irish Step Dance, and a childhood full of of competitive Greek Folk Dancing. See below:


So, I arrived at the Paramount last night with the very bare-bones background knowledge that can be gleaned from a Wikipedia article on Mr. Alvin Ailey and having a brief but informative discussion with Marie at Happy Hour about why what I was about to experience was important.

Overall, I enjoyed the performance. I thought most, if not all, of the costumes were pretty stupid. In the first dance, Firebird, the chorus looked like it was wearing dirty dockworking jumpsuits, and the main male dancers were wearing red spandex pants that were a fabulous color and would have been beautiful except for a bizarre strip of fabric that covered their nipples like a bra top and was very distracting. The second main dance had much better costumes, rich and gold with awesome bootie socks. Unfortunately, this was the Twyla Tharp choreographed piece, and the actual dance felt a little too cheesy and 80's for me. The final act was the one Alvin Ailey piece I had ever heard of, Revelations, and was as fabulous as it was rumoured to be, but the women wore these long skirts. While I understand how the costumes fit into the story and theme that the dance was telling, I couldn't help but be dissappointed that because the female dancers were covered in copious yards of fabric, it was difficult to fully appreciate the crispness of their movements and skill.