Word: ailey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...based at Manhattan's City Center and a regular visitor to the nation's college campuses, the Ailey company is perhaps the most thoroughly integrated ensemble in all the American performing arts-stylistically as well as racially. Its repertory blends or juxtaposes Afro-American quick steps with the elongated en pointe of classical ballet, Ornette Coleman with Benjamin Britten, urban rock with plaintive folk songs from the North Carolina hills. "What we do is celebrate people," says Ailey. "That's all we are about...
...people often celebrate right back. From Russia to North Africa (two of the troupe's more recent tour stops for the State Department), from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, Ailey's young, radiantly sleek troupe packs them in night after night. It is the hottest modern dance company in the U.S. today, and one of the most popular ever...
Last week's visit to the University of Iowa was a case in point. During the day the students donned leotards and crowded round for master classes conducted by Ailey Regulars Estelle Spurlock and Hector Mercado. At night the youngsters and other Iowa City dance devotees, attired in everything from sweatshirts to evening gowns and sneakers to wingtips, poured into Hancher Auditorium to see such Ailey staples as Flowers (a rock piece based on the life and death of Janis Joplin) and Masekela Langage (a militant, African-flavored work about the effect of violence on lives today). If there...
Born 42 years ago in Rogers, Texas (pop. 1,030), to a laborer and his wife, who soon separated, Ailey remained with his mother and moved with her to Los Angeles when he was eleven. After a brief flirtation with romance languages at San Francisco State College, he began studying with Lester Horton, a pioneering white choreographer whose West Coast school was devoted to the development of black dancers. By 1953 Ailey was dancing in Horton's Bal Caribe revue at Ciro's nightclub...