Alvin Ailey: An in Depth Look

Alvin Ailey’s life and career reflect the lived experience of a Black man born into an America struggling to survive the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, segregation, violent racism, and inequality. He was born in 1931 in Rogers, Texas. Ailey spent his youth picking cotton with his mother moving from one field to another until she found work in LA at an aircraft manufacturing business when he was 12. He spent his youth attending the Black Baptist church, where gospel and blues music-infused his sense of movement and rhythm. Ailey spoke about the practice of remembering in his creative process as a deeply personal experience that he calls, “Blood Memory.” Referring to his first ballets he said, “ [they] were ballets about my black roots. I lived in Texas … until I was 12… so I have lots of what I call blood memories … about Texas, blues and spirituals and gospel music, ragtime music … folk songs, work songs—all that kind of thing that was going on in Texas in the early ’30s, the Depression years. And I had very intense feelings about all those things. So the first ballets that I made when I came to New York were based on those feelings. … all of this is a part of my blood memory: my uncles, my family, my mother, all were in these churches … very intense, very personal [stuff].”

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Living in LA, he enjoyed sneaking into dance halls and bars to watch the adults dance and socialize late into the evening. At Thomas Jefferson High School, Ailey befriended Carmen de Lavallade, who, noticing his passionate interest in dance, invited Ailey to visit her at Lester Horton’s Dance School. Ailey, inspired by the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, studied modern dance from Lester Horton for several years until Lester’s death in 1953. 

Lester Horton was a very important figure in Ailey’s career and creative process. Horton’s dedicated inclusion of dancers from diverse and multifaceted cultural, sexual, and racial backgrounds informed the work that the school produced as well as ensure a safe comfortable home for the dancer to experiment, practice, and learn modern dance. Ailey said while describing his experience with Horton,

''The extraordinary thing about Horton, is that he led an amazing creative life but he was a perfectly normal man--no pink hair. He made one feel that it was perfectly normal to be creative, to paint, to choreograph. In his studio, he had a Mexican this and an Asian that and African masks all around, and it was all very normal to be surrounded by all of this. 'He put all of these different cultures into his technique. He took us to the Spanish part of town. When the Noh theater was there, he took us to that. He introduced me to Jack Cole, to all the tap dancers. He taught me about fabric--those yards and yards of jersey he had. To this day, whenever I use fabric, I think of Horton. Horton made you feel good about what you were, who you were. He never said you have to do black themes. The blackness comes out of me, but Horton showed me the form.”

After Lester Horton died in 1953, he and Carmen de Lavallade moved to New York. Ailey  immediately began performing in Broadway productions such as Truman Capote's “House of Flowers,” and “Jamaica” with Lena Horne. His career was taking flight. He studied dance with Martha Graham, and in 1958 founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater which has continued to produce work and provide opportunities for young and emerging choreographers in America for the past 62 years. They recently performed one of Ailey’s most masterful works, “Revelations,” at Nashville’s TPAC in February to celebrate the it’s 60th year running.

Deborah Obalil suggests that “dance, and a society’s reaction to it, are important cultural indicators,” in her historical analysis of Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater six years after Avlin Ailey’s death in 1989. At a time when modern dance was reflecting a post war esthetic of minimally expressive movement without overarching themes or emotional appeals, Ailey turned deeply inward, toward his “Blood Memories” of his experiences growing up in the south. He explains, “The most powerful works of art are usually the ones that are the most personal.” He fused modern dance techniques with jazz and ballet while incorporating gospel and blues music that he danced to growing up. By mining and combining these experiences of violent racism, sexism, segregation, socio-economic exclusion, alienation, community, hope, and perseverance he embodied them in a variegated vernacular of Black movement, and Black bodies. 

He showed the world a Black dance in “Revelations,” “Blues Suite,” and “Cry.” They have become necessary American expressions of hope and aspiration in the face of desperately oppressive forces -- celebrations of courage through creative expression, and a broad compassionate,  care for the presence of human beings throughout the world in one Black Gay man’s extraordinarily American career.

“It’s about giving. It’s about loving. It’s wanting to make something where there was nothing before. You know. It’s about watching young people grow. It’s about creating choreographers. It’s about creating dancers. It’s really all about watching something grow from what you give them. “ - Alvin Ailey