Dance Review : Opening Program by Ailey Troupe at Wiltern Theatre

Just last week, choreographer Garth Fagan spoke with Charlie Rose on PBS about the crucial distinction between “people who dance” and “dancers who pretend to be people.”

Alvin Ailey once said something similar, but the process and problem of professionalization that began before his death in 1989--and has accelerated since--made Fagan’s statement cruelly relevant to the Ailey company’s opening, four-part performance at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday.

Under artistic director Judith Jamison, the Ailey ensemble is a magnificent dancing machine--and where technique and physical power can generate emotion by themselves, there’s plenty of feeling coming from the stage.

For instance, the revival of “Vespers” (1986) by former Ailey principal Ulysses Dove builds tension from structural and spatial confinement, then releases it in forceful unison surges. To meet its demands, the dancers need plenty of strength but not soul or even individuality.

To a percussion score by Mikel Rouse, six women in black repeatedly run from and retreat to banks of chairs. Moments of contact fleetingly occur, but Dove’s statement focuses on women’s stifling isolation and heroic endurance en bloc. Inspired by memories of his grandmother, “Vespers” could be described as Dove’s “Cry,” but with the intensity distilled in formal group patterning rather than solo portraiture.

As such, it’s a perfect vehicle for ‘90s Ailey dancers, while Ailey’s own “Night Creature” (1974) falls apart from the lack of anything in the performance beyond physical prowess. Where Ailey had listened carefully to Duke Ellington’s score and mounted a sly, elegant put-down of a predatory and narcissistic subculture, we now get anonymous expertise with no edge. Only Ellington’s program note and a moment or two of comic pantomime suggest the dimension of social satire that’s missing.

Worse, nobody attacks the movement contrasts in the piece with any insight. Displaying a sense of American cultural resources as comprehensive as Ellington’s, Ailey had juxtaposed Afrocentric street dance, academic ballet batterie , sleek ballroom style and hip-swinging jazz-dance hedonism. That’s all flattened out now in the performance led by Lydia Roberts and Don Bellamy. The steps are there but somehow the piece ends up missing in action.

However, “Revelations” (1960) survives--maybe not intact, but in essence. The three dancers in “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” and the two in the baptismal duet don’t know how to build, vary or personalize the choreography, so these passages suddenly seem very long indeed or, worse, emptied out.

Nevertheless, Vikkia Lambert and Duane Cyrus do get to heaven on sublime technique, rather than spirit, in “Fix Me, Jesus” and Matthew Rushing storms the gates of hell with sizzling bravado in “Sinner Man.” In addition, Michael Joy artfully interprets the meditative “I Want to Be Ready” solo and, as always, the large-scale group passages are glorious.

Completing the program: the West Coast premiere of Brenda Way’s trio, “Scissors Paper Stone” (1994). Way is identified in the Ailey program notes as “artistic director of ODC/Dance San Francisco, the West’s preeminent modern dance company,” and the same reckless bull derails the piece itself.

It begins with a mocking, high-speed plot summary (on tape) of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” a work that dwarfs everything achieved in Way’s career. She then applies flashy, playful postmodern movement riffs to towering vintage blues and rock recordings and, when wiggly whimsy begins to pall, reshapes her whole approach to make a last-minute statement about interpersonal violence.

The only integrity and interest comes from the performances by Danielle Gee, Matthew Rushing (again) and, especially, Karine Plantadit-Bageot ( en travesti ) . They’re not remotely just “people who dance” but on their own hyperprofessional terms, they’re terrific.