Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey, Jr. (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58.

Biography

Beginnings

Ailey was born to his 17-year-old mother, Lula Cooper, in Rogers, Texas. Alvin developed an early interest in dance. In 1943 he and his mother moved to Los Angeles.

Initially, he took dance classes from choreographer Katherine Dunham, and later studied under Los Angeles, California dance teacher Lester Horton. While studying with Horton, Ailey pursued college courses in the Romance languages. At various times Ailey was enrolled at UCLA, Los Angeles City College, and the University of California, Berkeley. He studied authors like James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Carson McCullers. Ailey was fascinated by Horton's choreography, which consisted of theater pieces based on pictures by Paul Klee, poems by Garcia Lorca, music by Duke Ellington and Igor Stravinsky, and even Mexican themes. When Lester Horton died in 1953, 22-year-old Ailey was chosen to fill the shoes of his mentor. He became the director and resident choreographer for the Lester Horton Dance Theater. Within one year he choreographed three original dances for Horton's company: Creation of the World, According to St. Francis, and Mourning Morning.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Ailey started his own dance company in 1958 featuring primarily African American dancers. He integrated his dance company in 1963. He also directed; one notable production was Langston Hughes's Jericho-Jim Crow (1964).

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater popularized modern dance throughout the world with his international tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. As a result of these tours, Ailey's choreographical masterpiece Revelations, based on Ailey's experience growing up as an African American in the South, is among the best-known and most frequently seen of modern dance performances.

Ailey has been memorialized by the renaming of West 61st Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues in New York City as "Alvin Ailey Way"; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was located on that block at 211 West 61st Street from 1989 until 2005, when it moved to a new, bigger facility at the corner of West 55th Street and Ninth Avenue. Ailey was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988.

Further reading

• Ailey, Alvin and with A. Peter Bailey (1995). Revelations: The Autobiography of Alvin Ailey. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol. ISBN 1-55972-255-X. 
• DeFrantz, Thomas F. (2004). Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515419-3. 

See also

• Modern dance
• Postmodern dance
• 20th century concert dance
• List of dance companies

External links

• American Ballet Theater biography
• Kennedy Center biography
• Body and Soul: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from the Smithsonian Institution
• Alvin Ailey at the Internet Movie Database
• NPR: Holiday Dance at the Alvin Ailey Theater
• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

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