THE RELEVANT QUEER: Dancer, Choreographer, Director & Activist Alvin Ailey, Born January 5, 1931

“To be who you are and become what you are capable of is the only goal worth living.”

TRQ: Alvin Ailey, Born Jan. 5, 1931

Dancer, choreographer, director and activist Alvin Ailey was born on January 5, 1931. He used ballet, theater and modern dance to convey his African-American experience globally. The United States Congress recognized the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a “vital American cultural ambassador,” while Ailey built a reputation for supporting black artists and dancers.

Ailey was born in Rogers, Texas during the Great Depression, when violent racism and extensive segregation ran rampant in the American south. His father, Alvin Ailey Sr., abandoned the family. This forced Ailey’s mother, Mrs. Lula Cooper, to work odd jobs in cotton fields and homes of white families. Ailey recalled seeing his mother battered following a rumored rape by four white men. He has also described the mental and emotional impact of the widespread racial violence forming a core part of his Southern childhood.

When Ailey was ten, his mother moved to Los Angeles. Ailey followed in 1942. He attended the George Washington Carver Junior High School and Thomas Jefferson High School. In 1946, he saw a concert dance performance by the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium. This sparked Ailey’s interest in dance.

In 1949, classmate Carmen De Lavallade invited Ailey to Lester Horton’s Melrose Avenue studio, of the few integrated dance academies in the United States at the time. There, under Horton’s mentorship, Ailey started taking classes to study a range of dance styles, set design, costuming, and other skills. He also met such legendary talents as Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Truitte.

During these years, Ailey also worked at Horton’s school while studying at UCLA with plans to teach languages. Before long, however, Ailey realized his strong want to start a career in dance. He attended theater performances and vaudeville shows. In 1951 he moved to study at San Francisco State, where he met and formed a nightclub act with Maya Angelou.

Ailey joined Horton’s dance company in 1953 and debuted in Revue Le Bal Caribe. After Horton died from a heart attack in November that year, Ailey took over as the school’s artistic director.

In 1954, he joined Carmen in moving to New York for a role in Truman Capote’s House of Flowers starring Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey. Ailey decided against a career in acting after appearing in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions that included Belafonte’s Sing, Man, Sing, and Jamaica starring Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalbán.

“Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.”
— Alvin Ailey

Dissatisfied with acting, and growing frustrated with choreography in New York, Alvin worked to develop his own vision of dance. He formed the Lavallade-Ailey Dance Theater and started choreographing his own ballets. The first was Blues Suite (1958). It was choreographed to blues music and was popular with critics and audiences alike.

Even more popular, Revelations (1960) drew inspiration from the people, church and blues from Ailey’s childhood. The program described the performance as centered around the “motivations and emotions of American Negro religious music.”

The US State Department sponsored the company’s successful tour across Asia, to Senegal, East and West Africa. However, in America, a more formally organized Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) didn’t book many performances. The FBI surveilled the company and described Ailey’s homosexuality as “lewd” and “criminal.” AAADT formed a brief partnership with the Brooklyn Academy of Music that ended after a few years.

In 1970, on the verge of closing, AAADT embarked on another State Department- sponsored tour that concluded in Russia with a closing night that included over thirty curtain calls. AAADT returned to America a success and took up residence at the New York City Center.

“The black pieces we do that come from blues, spirituals and gospels are part of what I am. They are as honest and truthful as we can make them. I’m interested in putting something on stage that will have a very wide appeal without being condescending; that will reach an audience and make it part of the dance; that will get everybody into the theater. If it’s art and entertainment—thank God, that’s what I want to be.”
— Alvin Ailey

Ailey created nearly 80 ballets and choreographed for companies that included the American Ballet Company, Joffrey Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. He employed dancers based on their talent, regardless of their background.

Ailey received the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in 1968. In 1980, Ailey suffered a mental breakdown following a failed closeted relationship and a period of heavy drug abuse. Ailey also learned that he was bipolar. In 1988 he received the Kennedy Center Honors. In December 1989, Ailey died of complications related to AIDS.

He was inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame in 1992, and into the Legacy Walk in 2012. Also, in 2012, a crater on Mercury was named after Ailey. President Barack Obama awarded Ailey the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. In 2019, the Rainbow Honor Walk inducted Ailey as an LGBTQ person who made a “significant contribution” to his field.

About the Authors:

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and he is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore.

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Sources:

LA Times

NY Times

Out History

Queer Emporium