Video: A revelation in ballet celebrates one man's outstanding legacy

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, June 12, 2010. The audience is rising to its feet, stamping, clapping and in the local vernacular "hollering".

It's the second time in 24 hours that I witness this reaction to the Alvin Ailey dance company.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 52 years old this year, is one of America's great contemporary dance companies.

Built around the legendary founder from whom the company takes its name, the outfit's most famous piece – and the one which urges audiences to their feet – is Ailey's Revelations.

The dance, created in 1960, closes almost every programme Ailey presents and it is an eloquent, timeless, deeply moving piece of theatre.

As seemingly ageless as the signature piece, Ailey dancer Renee Robinson has been with the company for 29 years. She looks as though she must have joined the day she was born.

Robinson is in her dressing room at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), during a break between performances – she danced a solo in the matinee and will dance under an umbrella for her starring role in Revelations later that night.

There's not a hair out of place and she looks every inch the internationally acclaimed dancer that she is.

"It is the company's signature, a work that's often called the most popular ballet ever. It doesn't matter who you are, if you've had any kind of exposure to Southern Baptist life (from which Ailey drew his inspiration for Revelations) or not, when the ballet unfolds, you understand it. It's about struggle, about being reborn, it's about revelation," says Robinson.

To say that she enjoys dancing in Revelations is to not really grasp what the piece means to the company and to the form of contemporary dance in America and across the world.

"Miss (Judith) Jamison (the company's artistic director who took over from Alvin Ailey when he died in 1989) tells us that the thing we have to remember is that every time the ballet comes up, we are celebrating Mr Ailey's legacy and we will be presenting it to people who have seen it before and people who've never seen it.

"Dancing Revelations is a huge responsibility and it is a way we celebrate Mr Ailey's life and each time we dance it, it has to be as though it is for the first time."

Revelations is undoubtedly one of the great pieces

of art .

Just as Hamlet, Rodin's The Thinker, Van Gogh's Starry Night somehow capture what it is to be human and show it back to us with a breathtaking clarity, so Alvin Ailey's dance is more than a piece

of theatre. It touches something deep within human nature.

It's hardly surprising that the audience at BAM stood in the stalls as the dance came to a climax.

I've seen the company perform the piece in Manchester and in Bradford, and the reaction is always

the same.

Does Robinson find the Brooklyn audience even more enthusiastic than the ones around the world?

"Yeah," says Robinson, almost coyly. "It's basically the same reaction we get anywhere. Here in Brooklyn, where we started performing again about two years ago I guess there is an extra little vibe.

"But everywhere we go you can feel the audience not only watching us, but feeling us, listening to us, using all their senses to absorb the company."

While Revelations is amazing, the company about far more than just one dance.

Since 2004, the Alvin Ailey company has had its own, purpose-built home in Manhattan.

Taking a tour around the Hell's Kitchen building,

huge photographs of the company's important members adorn the walls. Alvin Ailey looks regally on all visitors who come through the doors.

The energy in the building comes not only from the panther-like dancers who wander around, all taut limbs and languid strides, but from the everyday New Yorkers who attend the 70 weekly dance classes held in the building.

Housing the offices of the company, 12 studios and a 255-seat theatre, the building is the largest dedicated to dance in the whole of the US.

Sylvia Waters, artistic director of Ailey II, the main company's training outfit, says the largest dance building in America is a fitting tribute to the man who created the company.

Waters, who was Ailey's executor, says the building goes above and beyond what Ailey might have imagined.

"It's awesome," says Waters, looking down on Ninth Avenue and 55th Street, a short walk from Central Park.

"It makes me feel very, very proud of what he accomplished."

Waters first met Ailey when she was a teenager and he was dancer at the height of his powers. He inspired her – just as he did countless others – to follow him into the dance world.

"He was magnificent, incredibly human. This building is his legacy and, though he never lived to see it, I always say that he must be looking down and smiling. I think it may even be beyond his expectations."

Audiences visiting Bradford next week may find their own expectations similarly exceeded.

Alvin Ailey, Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, Oct 15 and 16. 01274 432000.