An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 10/2/2020
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"Racism tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, you're not quite up to snuff."
Acclaimed dancer, choreographer, and activist Alvin Ailey is today regarded as one of the leading figures in 20th-century modern dance. Ailey grew up poor in Navasota, TX, but was inspired by the Black church services he attended, as well as the music he heard at the local dance hall. Alvin and his mother left Texas and moved to Los Angeles, when he was 12. In L.A. he began studying music and dance; his aptitude was such that, after graduating, he joined Lester Horton's prestigious dance company on a full scholarship in 1949. He appeared in his first Broadway show in 1954.
Ailey achieved his greatest fame with his own dance company, which he founded in 1958. That same year, he debuted Blues Suite, a piece that drew from his southern roots. Another of his major early works was Revelations, which drew inspiration from the African American music of his youth; in his words, "blood memories of childhood in rural Texas and the Baptist Church." Revelations heavily featured compositions by Duke Ellington; an artistic and commercial risk at the time. In 1974, Ailey would again use Ellington's music as the backdrop for Night Creature.
Ailey's Masakela Language, which probed the experience of being Black in apartheid-era South Africa, premiered in 1969. That same year, he founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), with its emphasis on employing dancers of color. In 1970 his troupe was sponsored by the U.S. State Dept. to perform throughout the Soviet Union --the first such cultural exchange since the 1920's. In 1971, he choreographed Judith Jameson's powerful solo Cry, which narrates the passage from degradation and slavery to defiant emancipation, culminating in a joyful dance to the popular song "Right On, Be Free." A departure from Ailey's signature jazz style, the piece is highly technical and places great physical and emotional demands on both performer AND audience.
Over the course of his career Ailey choreographed 80 ballets, organized benefits to raise money and awareness for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and also the anti-apartheid movement. He received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the United Nations Peace Award for his work, and was ultimately honored by the Kennedy Center in 1988 for his contributions, but died a year later in 1989. At the time there was, unfortunately, considerable social stigma surrounding AIDS and his cause of death was listed in the press as dyscrasia. Today the AAADT is regarded as one of the most prestigious dance companies in the world, with a repertory of more than 235 works by more than 90 critically acclaimed choreographers.
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