Alvin Ailey: Suite Otis

On Tuesday night, Chris and I attended a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Boston Opera House. It was opening night, and consequently there was a special premiere of a dance called Go In Grace which was accompanied live by Sweet Honey in the Rock, a terrific all-female, African-American a cappella group. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about modern dance, but I was thoroughly excited to see this performance, as I’d heard that Sweet Honey in the Rock were great, and because the second piece was a dance to Otis Redding songs. And I love Otis Redding.

The show opened with Go In Grace. I went in expecting Sweet Honey in the Rock to stand off to the side, serving as a beautiful but separate accompaniment to the dance. However, the singers turned out to be crucial components to the dance itself, acting, it seemed, as a group of wise elders in the community, imparting wisdom through their songs (all written by Sweet Honey) to the younger dancers. It was an impressive vocal performance—the group sang complex harmonies with impeccable tuning, gave expressive, soulful solos, and never needed a pitch pipe or tuning fork to start the next song. My first exposure to Sweet Honey in the Rock was certainly satisfying.

The second piece was the aforementioned Otis Redding dance, which I’ll come back to. The third and final piece was Revelations, one of the landmarks of 20th century dance, choreographed by Ailey himself in 1960. The soundtrack featured superlative recordings of classic African-American spirituals such as “Wade in the Water”, “Sinner Man” and “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” the energetic closing number. The highlight for me was a duet danced to a slower song called “Fix Me, Jesus,” in which the two dancers moved with a beautiful, expressive athleticism. It was easy to see why Revelations has had such staying power.

The second piece, Suite Otis, was choreographed in 1971 as a tribute to the late Otis Redding, and features several Redding recordings as the accompanying music. As an Otis Redding lover, the concept of this piece really excited me, and it seems, the rest of the audience. As the piece opened with the whistled verse from “The Dock of the Bay,” there was a hushed murmur of shared excitement. Yet in the end, Suite Otis struck me as the most disappointing of the three pieces. It seemed that the choreography attempted to act out the relatively simple sentiments of the Otis songs (“I’ve been loving you too long to stop now,” for example), yet didn’t do justice to what makes Otis’s songs so exquisitely powerful: his voice. I imagine that I came away with such disappointment largely due to my relative lack of passion for modern dance, and thus, for me, any dance tribute simply could not live up to Otis’s songs. However, it was pretty cool to sit in a large theater and hear Otis wailing from the speakers. I couldn’t resist the temptation to close my eyes and imagine that I was at a concert. If only his plane hadn’t crashed into Lake Monona. I'm hard pressed to think of any singer I would rather have been able to see live.

Suite Otis also introduced me to an Otis track I’d never heard before, and it has quickly become one of my favorites: “Just One More Day.” Here it is, along with two other tracks that were featured in Suite Otis. Enjoy:

Otis Redding - Just One More Day (YSI) (filesavr)
Otis Redding - I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) (YSI) (filesavr)
Otis Redding - Try a Little Tenderness (YSI) (filesavr)