The first thing that stands out about Alicia Graf Mack’s inaugural season as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is the number of commissions: five, so many they won’t fit on a single program. More important, though, is by whom—an issue at Ailey, where the dancers have tended to outshine their choreographers. Graf Mack has chosen wisely among the regulars and intriguingly among the newcomers. Both resident choreographers—the current, Jawole Jo Willa Zollar (after 30 years leading Urban Bush Women), and the former, the deservedly ubiquitous Jamar Roberts—are taking up Ailey’s legacy, specifically his “holy blues.” With Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Willie Johnson, and Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers as soundtrack, Zollar organizes her The Holy Blues around the slave-epoch ring shout—a combined circle dance and prayer circle. Roberts reimagines an achingly spiritual 1961 solo that Ailey made on himself. As for those who have had illustrious careers elsewhere, BalletX founding choreographer Matthew Neenan sets his sweet-tempered, careful observation of humanity to MacArthur awardee Heather Christian’s striking indie ditties. In counterpoint to Neenan’s lyric form, Minneapolis musical-theater maven Maija García turns to the epic, animating a traditional Caribbean folktale to Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles’s original score. The five-week City Center season offers many “new works” nights to choose from. —Apollinaire Scherr