Film Review: Ailey
Myrna White, Minnie Marshall, and Ella Thompson Moore. Dancing to Revelations, 1961 © Jack Mitchell, courtesy of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
AILEY (2021) DIR. JAMILA WIGNOT
Written by Belle McIntyre
Full disclosure – I can never get enough of Alvin Ailey. Everything about the company, the choreography, the skill and beauty of his dancers, the stunning productions, and the pure raw passion of Ailey’s vision as it is manifested with bodies moving through space, evoking the whole range of human emotions, from pain and sorrow through hope and sheer joy. The story of Alvin Ailey and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is a great example of an American success story and one worth knowing about as a counterpoint to so much of the negative racist behavior which seems to be occurring lately. Unfortunately, we do not get any real details on that part of the story. Nor do we learn anything new about the charismatic artist who created the company, left behind dances which never lose their universality, and a school which has incubated so much talent among dancers and choreographers.
Alvin Ailey with Misaye Kawasaki, Larry Maldonado, and Lelia Goldoni of the Lester Horton Dance Group, c. 1950 © Bob Willoughby
Born in 1931 in Texas to a single mother who cleaned houses, young Alvin worked in the fields as a kid. The two moved to LA when Alvin was 12 years old. There he encountered the world of dance in all of its forms, which he voraciously explored – from the Ballet Russe to Katherine Dunham. He was a superb dancer and became committed to dance from the moment he discovered it. The film frames the company’s evolution from “Blues Suite” which launched the company to rehearsal footage for the 60th Anniversary Tribute in 2018, which places the company in today’s context. Through the work of resident choreographers like Rennie Harris, whose hip-hop-inflected style distinguished “Lazarus”, his homage to Ailey, which was presented in the 2018 Anniversary Tribute, the legacy is passed on to the next generation.
The amazing thing to contemplate is that the company is now institutionalized. Judith Jamison, the Ailey dancer, who inherited the company in 1989, is the torch-bearer and she describes the energy that carries them all forward after 30 plus years. In the end, she said: “Alvin breathed in and never breathed out” “We are his breath out. That’s what we are living on”. There is a lot left to know and I still cannot get enough.
