The Ailey men strut their stuff in Hofesh Schechter’s dazzling UPRISING (photo by Paul Kolnik)

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Hofesh Schechter’s 2006 Uprising charged out of the gate at City Center on December 28, kicking off Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s all-new program with a vengeance. Jeroboam Bozeman, Antonio Douthit-Boyd, Kirven Douthit-Boyd, Yannick Lebrun, Jamar Roberts, Jermaine Terry, and Marcus Jarrell Willis emerge from the smoky shadows and march to the front of the stage, then spend the next twenty-six minutes immersed in acts of powerful aggression, animal-like scoots low to the floor, and playful in-fighting, all set to the Jerusalem-born, London-based choreographer’s percussive, electronic score (with Vex’d), with superb lighting by Lee Curran that keeps things dark and mysterious. Six of the men wear relatively drab-colored clothing except for Willis, whose red shirt stands out as the men foment an unstated revolution. Restaged by Bruno Guillore, Uprising, which will next be performed on December 31 at 2:00, is an exhilarating piece that shows off the vast talent of the Ailey men, led by an impressive Roberts.

The Ailey women take center stage in Jacqulyn Buglisi’s haunting SUSPENDED WOMEN (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Uprising was followed by Suspended Women, which gives a chance for the Ailey women to strut their stuff. Choreographed by New York City native Jacqulyn Buglisi, the eighteen-minute work features fifteen women wearing long gowns, petticoats, and hoop skirts (the lovely costumes are by A. Christina Giannini), led by the ever-elegant Linda Celeste Sims in pink and Hope Boykin in purple, spinning, twirling, subsiding to the floor and rising again, sometimes delicately, sometimes robustly, to music by Maurice Ravel, with interpolations by Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). On several occasions, four men enter the picture, bare-chested in suit jackets and dark pants, but this is all about the ladies. The haunting 2000 piece was inspired by seventeenth-century nun and author Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz “and is dedicated to all women since the beginning of time ‘suspended,’” Buglisi explains in a program note. Indeed, this energizing work, which will next be performed on January 4 at 3:00, lets these glorious women shine.

Matthew Rushing’s ODETTA honors the singer-songwriter and activist on the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act (photo by Steve Wilson)

The all-new program concluded with former Ailey star dancer and current rehearsal director and guest artist Matthew Rushing’s third piece for the company, ODETTA, an overly earnest tribute to folksinger and civil rights activist Odetta Holmes. Rushing, who previously choreographed 2005’s Acceptance in Surrender with Boykin and Abdur-Rahim Jackson and 2009’s overly earnest Harlem Renaissance homage Uptown, once again creates movement that works too literally with the soundtrack, which includes Odetta’s iconic performances of “This Little Light of Mine,” “John Henry,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” and “A Hole in the Bucket,” a duet with Harry Belafonte. Akua Noni Parker is vibrant embodying Odetta, who passed away in 2008 at the age of seventy-seven, but Rushing adds unnecessary video projections by Stephen Alcorn and a confusing quartet of interlocking bench artworks by Travis George to his straightforward narrative, which reaches its nadir when he lowers an American flag and adds army helmets to the male dancers as Odetta sings Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” Rushing, who so excelled at interpreting other choreographers’ work, needs to develop a more inventive and creative movement vocabulary for his dancers, relying less on mere heartfelt passion and more on insight and ingenuity. That said, ODETTA, which will next be performed December 31 at 2:00 (what would have been Odetta’s eighty-fourth birthday), received the most rapturous applause of the evening.