Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey
Alvin Aileywas an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance. In 1977, Ailey was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChoreographer
Date of Birth5 January 1931
CityRogers, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.
DeFrantz's study...is not the first book about the protean Ailey, who was born in hardscrabble Texas in 1931 and died in 1989 after creating close to 80 works. But it is perhaps the most comprehensive, combining biography, criticism, the analysis of dance criticism, and a sort of corporate history, siting the now firmly established Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the international cultural landscape.
Sometimes you feel bad about yourself when there's no reason to.
We still spend more time chasing funds than we do in the studio in creative work.
Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
Everything in dancing is style, allusion, the essence of many thoughts and feelings. The abstraction of many moments.
Money is a never-ending problem.
I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work.
But the dance speaks to everyone. Otherwise it wouldn't work.
My dancers must be able to do anything, and I don't care if they are black or white or purple or green. I want to help show my people how beautiful they are. I want to hold up the mirror to my audience that says this is the way people can be, this is how open people can be.
The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time.
Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody.
Making dances is an act of progress; it is an act of growth, an act of music, an act of teaching, an act of celebration, an act of joy.