Alvin Ailey: a dance master in light and shadow
Alvin Ailey was an American dancer, director, choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1961.
His dream was to nurture Black artists and express the universality of the African-American through dance.
The Whitney Museum, in New York, presents the exhibition “Edges of Ailey” (25 Sep. 2024 – 9 Feb. 2025) featuring 80 artists, including painters Jean-Michel Basquiat and Geoffrey Holder, fellow dancer and choreographer. It shows Alvin’s personal notes:
I’m a black man whose roots are in the sun, the dirt of the south, holly blues, my gospel church and street people whose lives are full of beauty, misery, pain and hope.
Born in 1931, Alvin was raised by a very poor single mother. He knew hardship as a child in rural Texas. His world was filled with blues, gospel, juke joints and church songs.
Ailey‘s story is one of sacrifice. Springing from his childhood “blood memories” of growing up with no money, attending services at a Baptist Church, he was possessed by his dreams.
With his mother, he moved to California and started dancing at 18. Later he studied in New York and dedicated his life to dance.
Ailey was an incomparable dancer, a forward-facing visionary and one of the most significant choreographers of the 20th century. His work changed the course of modern dance forever and his legacy lives on today.
He was convinced that one of his country richest treasures was the cultural heritage of African-Americans, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.
We teach people to feel, to own their own feelings. I believe that dance come from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
Ailey created 79 dance pieces. He died from AIDS in 1989 at the age of 58. Five thousand people attended his funeral.
The company was not exclusively a storehouse for his own work.
Today, the company continues Alvin‘s mission presenting important dances of the past and commissioning new ones. Madonna studied with Alvin Ailey, before she became a cultural icon.
The Whitney Museum, in New York, has become a sanctuary for his dancing spirit, a convergence of visual art and the ephemeral beauty of dance.
The Alvin Ailey Dance Exhibition, not confined to the stage, pulses through photographs, stilled moments of bodies caught in flight, expressions of grace and defiance, captured forever by the lenses of masterful photographers.
These photos, a dialogue of light and shadow, colour and form, are windows into the soul of Alvin.
Each one tells a story of movement of culture and history. In this stillness, the power of Ailey‘s choreography persists, spreading its roots into the soil of other art forms, extending its branches into music, painting and photography.
Photographers, movement hunters
Dancers are immortalised through the lenses of artists who became the eye of dance, translating kinetic energy into static yet powerful images.
Jack Mitchell is known for iconic portraits of artists, musicians and dancers. His deep appreciation for the human body and his connection to the dance world made him a natural ally of Alvin.
His photographs, intimate and grand, show the dancer’s physicality and the inner turmoil and joy that drive their bodies across the stage.
Martha Swope, another legend beyond the camera took shots filled with an insider’s knowledge of movement. She knew how the body should look at every turn and leap, capturing the precise moment that tells a story.
Her eye for timing catches fleeting movements.
John Lindquist had a deep love for dance and started focusing on Martha Graham, another pioneer of modern dance. His black-and-white photos capture the rawness of early choreographies with stark images, almost sculptural, as though the dancers are carved from marble rather than flesh.
He offers a glimpse into Ailey’s artistic evolution, showing the rise of a young choreographer whose vision changed the dance world.
Max Waldman left an indelible mark with dramatic dance portraits. A theatre photographer, his images are full of contrast: light against dark, stillness against motion. They feel like paintings, with dancers suspended in time, like figures on a canvas.
His use of shadow evokes emotional depth, where joy, sorrow and resistance intertwine in every movement.
Alvin Ailey’s choreography did not live solely in the world of dance. His work transcended the stage, influencing other forms of art and becoming a source of inspiration for visual artists, musicians and poets.
Ailey‘s dancers became muses for painters and sculptors. The rhythm of his pieces, the visual motifs of struggle, freedom and faith, found echoes in the brushstrokes of painters such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden.
These artists, like Ailey, explored the African-American experience, delving into the complexity of identity, community and search for spiritual redemption.
The movements of his dancers, rooted in history and spirituality, inspired other artists who wished to tell stories of struggle, joy and resilience.
In music, Alvin chose to dance in harmony with compositions of great black musicians, from traditional gospel spirituals to blues and the jazz of Duke Ellington.
His dancers express with music creating an emotional depth that, like a perfect harmony, resonates deeply in the soul.
Ailey’s choreography is poetry in motion. His dancer’s movements are metaphors, telling stories of love, pain, freedom and hope.
The influence of Ailey’s work will continue to ripple through the arts, a lasting testament to the power of dance to express the inexpressible.
Ailey II, founded in 1974, offers early-career dancers vital experience to transition from training as a student to becoming a professional dancer. They have the largest building inn USA dedicated to dance.
Ailey made an immeasurable impact around the world of dance. In 2014, President Barack Obama selected Ailey to be a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In every photograph, every frame of movement suspended in time, we admire dance as Alvin Ailey’s lasting legacy, a dance that never truly ends, a dance that is the hidden language of the soul.
