Word: ailey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Jones is not the only black choreographer to resist the aesthetic dominance of the late, great Alvin Ailey, whose masterworks were mostly composed to black music and whose themes were rooted in African-American history. The austere, abstract work of Ralph Lemon, 42, for example, owes a clear visual debt to such white Post-modern experimentalists as Meredith Monk and Trisha Brown. With their sense of order and symmetry, Lemon's dances even resemble the plotless ballets of George Balanchine, in spirit if not vocabulary. When a friend in Denver challenged Lemon to create a piece with a black theme...
Ulysses Dove, 47, another New Yorker, defiantly opts for freedom. He has earned the rare distinction of being the only dancer to have performed for both Ailey and Merce Cunningham, whose choreographic visions were diametrically opposite. Despite his admitted debt to Ailey, for whom he also composed dances, Dove has no interest in centering his own work on black motifs. In fact, sex rather than race dominates most of the 17 pieces, raw but energetic, that he has created since he stopped dancing in 1980. "If you want to be political, the place to do that is politics," he says...
There were highlights, however. Meredith Fitzgerald (9:56.75) and Jen Kearney (2:13.04) both ran personal records in the 3000 and the 800, respectively. Belmont native Shireen Boulos and Lynch both placed in the 100-and 200-meter race. Freshman Ailey Penningroth placed fourth in the 400 meter hurdles (1:03.74) and sixth in the shot...
...women, the results at the Eastern Championships were about the same. Alexia Cruz failed to qualify for the finals of the long jump, and freshman Ailey Penningroth also found that event to be her Achilles' heel in the pentathlon, fouling on her first two attempts and forcing her to jump conservatively on her last attempt...
Billboards, which the Joffrey will take on a 20-city tour over the next seven months, is hardly the first time ballet has reached out to pop. Balanchine used Gershwin, Paul Taylor the Andrews Sisters, Alvin Ailey Count Basie and others. And of course the great rock performers like Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger have set the standard of movement in that particular pop art. Still, the Joffrey evening radiates grace because it embraces a challenging world with very little in the way of snobbery or preconception...