Lazarus

News & Press 

Watch an ABC Nightline feature on Lazarus and Alvin Ailey's 60th anniversary 

 
"Has Lazarus become more potent and raw? Is it more relevant given the dramatic events that have occurred—the murder of George Floyd and the wave of uprisings in 2020 that demanded an end to police violence against people of color—since its premiere in 2018? Yes and yes and more yes."  
- The New York Times, 12/5/21: "Exploring the Dimensions of Black Power at Alvin Ailey" 

 
"The premieres in Ailey's 60th anniversary season have risen to the occasion. The one not to miss is Rennie Harris' two-act Lazarus, a dense, difficult nightmare of African American history in which despair is set against the delight of rhythmically intricate dance and cool Philadelphia style." The New Yorker, 12/24/18 

 
"Stunning. Bold. Gorgeously unhurried, the 15-person piece proceeds according to the intuitive logic of a nightmare—in isolated shards untethered to dramatic imperative. From his vast knowledge of hip-hop and its precursors, the Philadelphia native has chosen for Lazarus’s foundation a restless, speedy rhythm-house: wending, grapevine steps, rolling cha-cha hips, jitterbugging feet, and lower legs flung forward as in Irish step-dancing. For Ailey’s extraordinary troupers, he has fashioned a maze of vintage steps more exhilaratingly complex than anything you’ll find on YouTube or on the streets. The audience goes crazy—finally something to whoop and whistle over. Yet look closely and you will see in the infectious moves traces of the agonising early steps. Speaking in code, they divulge why, once risen, every Lazarus must keep moving—or grooving."  
- Financial Times, 12/3/18 

"In this hourlong work, Mr. Harris asks many deep questions, implicitly and explicitly, through voice-over text and song lyrics: questions about the 'blood memory' that Ailey cited as the source of his choreography; questions about how to be a black man in a white world; questions that feel painfully urgent and personal. Images of terrible beauty coalesce and disperse. At wide intervals, there’s also music for dancing, with an irresistible beat. When that music is going, Mr. Harris gives us something like heaven. The choreography is based on the Philadelphia style called GQ: rhythmically intricate footwork with a laconic upper body; off-kilter steps as if on a rolling surface; jumps that twist loosely in the air. The cool confidence of the style has a spiritual force that’s uplifting, and the pleasure of it is mixed with a revelation of the past in the present, of black history in the body language. Lazarus brings Ailey back to life by showing why he still matters to a living artist of Mr. Harris’s caliber."  
- The New York Times "Rennie Harris’s Lazarus Asks Big Questions at Ailey" 12/2/18
 
"…a poetic homage to Alvin Ailey, a man Mr. Harris never met but who, he said, felt like a guide during the process. Now that he has some distance, he said he sees Lazarus as the final piece of a trilogy that began with Home (2011), a work for Ailey exploring club culture in the time of AIDS, and continued with Exodus (2015), which alluded to police brutality and activism. Lazarus is about resurrection and, for Mr. Harris, that circles back to Ailey: With each dancing generation, with every performance of his 1960 masterpiece Revelations, Ailey is reborn. 'He’s still affecting folk: black, brown, white, indifferent, whatever,' Mr. Harris said. 'He’s still affecting the world on a massive scale.'” - The New York Times "A Dance Homage to Alvin Ailey as His Company Turns 60" 11/27/18