Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey was a dancer, choreographer, and teacher whose vision and leadership lead him to create one of the major art institutes of our time. The famous Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. A choreographer is a person who creates dance compositions and plans and arranges dance movements and patterns for dances. Movement is a language as rich and expressive as written or spoken language. We understand and use movement language so naturally, we are often unaware of the many ways we use it to communicate. We use movement in expressing emotions, giving directions, teaching, telling a story, and many more.

He was born January 5, 1931, in the central Texas town of Rogers, in Bell County. He died in New York December 1, 1989, of blood dyscrasia. Alvin was the only child of his mother, Lula. His father abandoned them when he was six months old. Alvin and his mother moved to Navasota Texas, eventually settling in Los Angeles at the age of twelve. In order for them to provide for themselves they had to pick cotton, and do domestic work.

At an early age Alvin showed interest in art by drawing pictures. When Alvin first discovered dance and fell in love with concert dance, he was at a junior high school field trip to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlos. Inspired by performances of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, eventually he took dance classes from choreographer Katherine Dunham. But his most important influence came from choreographer Lester Horton, the founder of the first racially integrated dance company in this country, that Alvin started a journey to his professional dance career.

Alvin began studying with Horton in 1949, leaving behind his romance language studies at UCLA. In 1953 after Horton's death, the year Alvin made his performance debut; Alvin became the director of the Lester Horton Dance Theater and began choreographing his own work. In 1954, Alvin and his friend Carmen de Lavallade were invited to New York to dance in the Broadway show, House of Flowers by Truman Capote. Staying in New York after the show, Alvin studied ballet, modern dance, and acting. One of his teachers being Martha Graham, a very central figure in modern dance.

Over about the next ten years or so Alvin appeared on and off Broadway and on film as a dancer, choreographer, actor and director. In 1958 Alvin's choreography for Blues Suite was his first financial success; this is what marked the beginning of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. It's a school to educate dance students in the history and art of ballet and modern dance. In which he also integrated in 1963, because he wanted to show people that color meant nothing and what was important was the quality of the work. Alvin commented in one of his interviews that the basis of Ailey enterprise was that "the dancers be fed, kept alive, and interested" in the work. World fame quickly followed. From the very beginning Alvin's work received great reviews. In 1960, Alvin choreographed Revelations, the classic masterpiece of American modern dance, and the companies' signature ballet, based on the religious heritage of his youth, and blood memories of Texas.

The influence of African Americans in American dance has been very big. They have impacted nearly every aspect of dance past, and present like modern, hip hop, street, and Broadway theatre. Dance can very through out different cultures. Alvin was big about not every one doing the same thing, he like to see their uniqueness. Alvin