Multimodal Dance

Tonight I took a break from the crazy amount of end of the semester work and went to see a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. There aren't enough adjectives to describe it. But I'm biased because I love dance and I've been around it my whole life. Tonight, though, was the world premiere of "Uptown" choreographed by one of the company members. This performance was something I've never seen in dance before...and this might be because I don't generally go to modern dance performances. Dance is usually set to music, but tonight, they incorporated images, audio recordings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Zora Neale Hurston, poetry by Langston Hughes, and narration by one of the dancers. It was all beautifully choreographed to present the history of the Harlem Renaissance as a multimodal feast for the senses.