A sold-out performance brought the audience to its feet with loud applause and cheers at the end of each segment at the opening night of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at Sony Centre for the Performing Arts last Friday night.
The audience was obviously thrilled with the different segments which showcased a mixture of choreography in groups and solo alike.
The cast together with Artistic Director Robert Battle, Associate Artistic Director Masazumi Chaya, Rehearsal Director and Guest Artist Matthew Rushing and Executive Director Bennett Rink had some very good reviews from a cross section of audience members.
But despite all the glamour associated with the public performance, much is not known about a private situation many dancers face, injuries that sometimes leave them on extended leave of absence from the job and in some cases replacements of some parts of the body after many years of performing different styles of the art.
This revelation was made during a Q and A between one of the current dancers, Michael Jackson Jr., a New Orleans native, who started dancing at 14 and George Randolph, a former principal dancer with Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble and with Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, who founded Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts in Toronto in 1992.
“Every day I wake up my body feels completely different than it did the day before,” Jackson said, adding that while on tours which last for a few months, they constantly have to maintain their training and techniques on a daily basis. “We take classes every day.”
He added that it’s a necessity to have a bath tub at every hotel. “It feels like you sluice off the day, not even the dirt of the day, but the aches and the pains … because the next day you’ll have to dance harder than you did.”
Jackson who is versatile in a variety of dance styles joined the company in 2011 and after a period of nursing injuries to his knee for a second time, returned to the company in 2015.
“It’s like the Lord telling me that maybe you need to stop and so I stopped. Injuries teach you a lot, it kind of slows you down so you can investigate your real feelings, especially here because we’re always on the go, you never get a chance to catch up with yourself in a way and sometimes your body says ‘no’.”
Jackson added that during one of the company’s seasons in New York, he injured his knee and had to have surgery and it was then that he decided to leave the company. “Injury is not fun because someone else has to do your work and that never feels good but I’m back and it works.”
Randolph, who had the privilege of being coached by Alvin Ailey who passed away in 1989 on the ballet Hard Times Blues, also had his taste of injuries throughout his career.
“I thought I was indestructible and all of a sudden as time goes on, years later, those injuries increase and I got two hips,” he said with a chuckle.
The New Jersey native reminisced about the tough training he and four other boys received from Ailey while preparing to perform Hard Times Blues at Carnegie Hall.
“He rehearsed us in the basement of City Centre on the concrete floor for hours,” Randolph chuckled adding that by the time they finished, they were gasping.