[Dixielandjazz] For Billie Holiday Fans

[Steve Barbone]

This is for the more eclectic fans of Billie Holiday. The following is a
major portion of the American Dance Theater program at City Center through
December 31.

I saw a version of this program in the early 1960s and it was wonderful. (Of
course I was a lot less set in my ways back then. :-) VBG )

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


A Portrait of Billie
Billie Holiday¹s Torment Translated Into Movement

NY TIMES - By JENNIFER DUNNING - December 15, 2006

Content triumphed over form in a program presented by the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater on Wednesday night at City Center. After a decade or
so of increasingly hectic, high-energy plotless choreography, John Butler¹s
³Portrait of Billie² looked mighty good. Created in 1959 as a vehicle for
Carmen de Lavallade, the great dance actress, the piece follows the singer
Billie Holiday from stardom to drug-addled solitude.

³Portrait of Billie,² set to four songs that Holiday made famous, is a
signature piece by Mr. Butler, who died in 1993 and has largely been
forgotten except by the Ailey company. He was known for his early blending
of ballet and modern dance, for sometimes melodramatic storytelling and for
his championing of black performers. This new restaging by Ms. de Lavallade
and Masazumi Chaya suggests that he was capable of unexpected subtlety and
economy. 

Mr. Butler could not quite evoke the haunting pain of the song ³No More.²
But the rest of the piece flickers with Holiday¹s complex personality,
interpreted on Wednesday by Asha Thomas with sensitivity to the twined
threads of ambition, yearning and wrecked subservience, though Billie¹s
final debasement could have used a little less truculence. Clifton Brown was
Billie¹s Man, sensual and cynical in equal part.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs through Dec. 31 at City
Center, West 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, Manhattan, (212)
581-1212.