Word: ailey
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...young dancer, Alvin Ailey was lithe, handsome and much sought after. But artistically he felt that he was stepping on his own toes. He wanted to be a choreographer and build a new dance company. That company's mission would be to sum up the dance heritage of Ailey's fellow blacks, to express "the exuberance of [the Negro's] jazz, the ecstasy of his spirituals and the dark rapture of his blues." In 1958, when Ailey was 27, he got the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater off the ground. Yet if Ailey today occupies a special...
...Alvin Ailey, D.F.A., dancer. The creative genius of such men (volatile, restless and attractive) has made modern ballet almost an American monopoly and graduated dancing from the amusement of a privileged few to an ensemble art form expressing the spirit and aspirations of a whole complex culture...
Alas, no. Lord Byron is infused with Thomson's musical craftsmanship-adroit trios and sextets, transparent orchestral writing-but not the expressive spark to illuminate the drama. An exception is the nostalgic suite of dances for the third-act ballet (choreographed by Alvin Ailey) that depicts Byron's travels, amours and death in Europe. The rest is a feeble reminder of a once-insinuating talent...
...clear case of the same sort of show biz is another new work in the Jeffrey repertory, Alvin Ailey's The Mingus Dancers, based on a grouping of ponderously orchestrated pieces by fabled Jazz Bassist Charlie Mingus. The work is an odd mixture of five abstractly modern sections and four stagey "vaudeville" routines, some comic, some gloomily Brechtian in flavor. They include a morose parade of grinning soldiers in clownlike, whiteface makeup, a lady from Spain heel-clacking through a campy flamenco, a pair of policemen mock-dueling with nightsticks. The vaudevilles have no discernible relationship to the abstract...
...Bernstein, who had already set a Hebrew prayer for the dead (Kaddish) to music in his third symphony. By all accounts, his trip through the Roman Catholic liturgy will be something to see as well as hear. Along with the usual array of orchestra, choir and soloists, the Alvin Ailey dance company will appear before scenery by Oliver Smith. "It is an entirely new concept," says Bernstein, but he refuses to give many details. "I don't want to take away any of the fun." Fun or not, the faithful will have to wait until September for the premiere...