Original Listing Description

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER POSTER Signed by Judith Jamison & 24 Others! This New York City Center Season Poster marked the end of the dances, and production team's Dec.1996 season performances and was signed: Thank You, Judith Jamison. Notable signatures by Zorba Soteras, Don Bellamy, Lisa Johnson, Toni Pierce, Rene Robinson, Matthew Rushing and many others.The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presented some of its repertory classics on Saturday night at City Center.The evening began with Alvin Ailey's gritty ''Blues Suite,'' a piece in which the recorded accompaniment combines songs by Brother John Sellers with the tolling of bells and the melancholy sound of a locomotive whistle. In the world of this dance, it is always late at night on the wrong side of the tracks.The cast danced the night away with an effective combination of melancholy, stoicism and anger. Toni Pierce, Danielle Gee and Desiree Vlad convincingly suggested that they were doomed to a life in a New Orleans brothel. And in dance-hall scenes Dudley Williams portrayed an eager blunderer and Renee Robinson and Michael Joy were two strong-minded people who were willing to be partners, yet neither would put up with any nonsense from the other.Donald McKayle's ''Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder,'' a work from 1959 about prisoners on a chain gang, received a welcome revival. The choreography is remarkable for the way it makes intricate contrapuntal movements seem not only fascinating patterns in space, but also signs of the prisoners' weariness, doggedness and desperation. The cast brought the choreography to a feverish climax in which Matthew Rushing and Don Bellamy were prisoners who attempted to escape their confinement. As a symbolic personification of all the women the prisoners dreamed of, Elizabeth Roxas was at various times saucy, lyrical and maternal.

Note: This item has been sold and is no longer available. This page serves as a historical price reference for Playbill collectors and appraisers.