Memories of baptism, spirituals: A breakdown of "Revelations"

When he made "Revelations" in 1960, Alvin Ailey drew on his memories of Sunday services in rural Texas, on his own baptism in a snake-infested pond, and on the power that the singing of spirituals and gospel songs had for him as a child. The resulting work is one of the most popular modern dances ever made. Here's a quick look at the dance.

"Revelations" is divided into three parts. Ailey described the first section, "Pilgrim of Sorrow," this way: "It was about trying to get up out of the ground. The costumes and the set would be colored brown, an earth color, for coming out of earth, for going into the earth."

It opens with "I Been Buked" (pronounced as a shortened form of "rebuked") in which dancers in simple costumes, individually dyed to match the warm brown of their skin, move together as a sculptural unit. They reach upward turning their hands, palms forward, or sink into deep plies, arching their arms like wings.

From there, the dance breaks apart into the rapid falls and runs of "Didn't the Lord Deliver Daniel," with its sense of frantic energy.

"Fix Me Jesus" is an intricate duet between a woman and her confessor in which she struggles for redemption, desperately scrambling up his body into a series of floating lifts. It ends with the image of the man holding her upwards toward the light.

"The second part was something that was very close to me — the baptismal, the purifications rites. Its colors would be white and blue," Ailey said of "Take Me to the Water." This section opens with a processional. A woman carrying a huge white umbrella leads a group of men and women who step through strips of blue and white cloth that they wave and shake like water.

The joyful, light mood of "Wading in the Water" darkens with the solo "I Want to be Ready." Here a man reaching from his position on the floor and never leaving the ground, goes through a series of upward balances. He seems to be always pressed back down.

In the third section, "Move, Members, Move," which Ailey described as " ... Surrounding the gospel church, the holy rollers and all the church happiness." It starts with the desperate, fugitive running of three men in "Sinner Man."

It goes on to the gossipy fan-waving of "The Day is Past and Gone" by women in big yellow hats shaking their fans, and lowering themselves onto their stools, their backs to the audience, lifting a leg to let in the cool breeze.

"Revelations" ends with the rowdy, rollicking "Rocka my Soul," which invariably gets the audience onto its feet.