Evoking a garden with bells

The first world premiere of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater season at City Center Friday night fell disappointingly flat. Karole Armitage has returned to New York after some years in Europe and made a nice re-entry last December with a program by her own company.

Her new "Gamelan Gardens" for Ailey is set to recorded music of Lou Harrison, heretofore largely the preserve of Mark Morris in these parts. Ms. Armitage's choice of music was Mr. Harrison's lush, cleverly exotic Double Concerto for Violin, Cello With Javanese Gamelan. In three sections, it keeps a busy sense of movement alive even when the aura is slower and dreamier; constantly struck bells and gongs and mallet instruments will do that.

Ms. Armitage has responded with a rather too incessantly busy kind of choreography, as if responding more to the flurry of notes than to the overall mood. The 12 dancers, among the Ailey company's best, fuss and twitch, alone or in pairs. There is a hint of waving tendrils at the outset, but garden evocations are not sustained.

Eventually a lead couple, Dwana Adiaha Smallwood and Clifton Brown, is set off against the group, but any dramatic tension in this opposition is unclear. The main problem choreographically is a persistent facelessness of dance language. Maybe Ms. Armitage feels more comfortable working out her ideas with her own dancers and testing the boundaries between ballet and modern dance more overtly.

But the main problem, period, of "Gamelan Gardens" was the costumes, by Peter Speliopoulos. They consisted of loose-fitting white fabric and looked like pyjamas and baby-doll nighties. The effect was more silly than seductive, and about as unflattering to the wonderful bodies of the Ailey dancers as anything one could imagine. Maybe Ms. Armitage's choreography would look better in different garb, but it's probably too late for that now.

The program opened with Ulysses Dove's "Episodes" (1989). One could complain that the choreography, to Robert Ruggieri's crash-and-bang score, too often tipped toward Apache jazz dance. But "Episodes" is a spectacular showcase for the Ailey dancers, full of abrupt entrances and dispassionate exits (individuals just stop and walk into the wings) and violent partnering. Everyone was terrific, but Linda Celeste Sims, in general and in her gymnastic backward bend from the knees, was the most terrific of all.

At the end came a new cast in "Revelations." This Ailey classic still had plenty of the requisite spirit but made less of an impact than it had at the opening gala on Wednesday, largely because of the absence of live music.

Alicia J. Graf and Jamar Roberts did a nice job with the "Fix Me, Jesus" section, and some of Ms. Graf's seraphic poses rightly drew cheers from the enthusiastic audience. But in all, the two looked less secure, individually and together, than Ms. Sims and Glenn Allen Sims had been on Wednesday.

The other big cheers were lavished on Clifton Brown for his "I Wanna Be Ready" solo, as commanding in his way as Amos J. Machanic Jr. had been at the gala.

The Ailey season continues through Dec. 31 at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212, alvinailey.org or nycitycenter.org.

-NYTimes