It would seem the timing could hardly be more apt for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre's new civil rights-themed piece, Odetta, a tribute to the late folk singer often referred to as the voice of the civil rights movement.
"I'd like to take credit," quips Robert Battle, artistic director at Ailey, of the timing, noting that the ballet arrives - and soon tours the country - just as a national conversation percolates over the state of civil rights in America, sparked by the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. "There's clearly something going on that's very important."
Of course, he adds, the piece was planned long before those events. Battle says he got the idea for Odetta when he attended a memorial for the singer, who sang at the historic 1963 March on Washington and influenced singers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, in 2008, the year of her death. (Her full name was Odetta Holmes, but she went by her first name.)
Battle wasn't yet at Ailey - he arrived in 2011, succeeding Judith Jamison, Ailey's famous muse who ran the company for 21 years. "But I was thinking, this would make a wonderful dance," he says.
To find a choreographer, he didn't go far - he turned to his rehearsal director, veteran Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing, who uses 10 of Odetta's recordings - including This Little Light of Mine and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child - in a work that can be called lightly biographical.
Dancer Hope Boykin, another Ailey veteran, represents the spirit of Odetta in the piece. Highlights include the whimsical There's a Hole in the Bucket and Odetta's cover of the biting Dylan anti-war song Masters of War. (Dylan's been quoted as saying that Odetta turned him on to folk singing.)