Looking Past Revelations
Bloomberg Businessweek|July 26, 2021
Can a documentary tell new truths about the man behind the Alvin Ailey dance company?
James Tarmy
Looking Past Revelations

In 1960, with his fledgling company only two years old, choreographer Alvin Ailey premiered Revelations, a series of kinetic, soaring dances set to African-American spirituals. Drawing on the modernist techniques of Martha Graham and Ailey’s mentor, Lester Horton, the work was entirely new: a dance about the Black experience that audiences around the globe could love. “Alvin Ailey is Black, and he’s universal,” said actor Cicely Tyson during a tribute to Ailey at the Kennedy Center in 1988. It’s “the very spirit that has made him a Pied Piper of modern dance.”

As the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has grown, shrunk, and eventually been institutionalized in the firmament of American culture, Ailey’s name is closer to a brand than that of a person. The original company is the resident at New York City Center and has performed in more than 70 countries; Ailey II, a younger dance ensemble, was founded in 1974; the Ailey School provides professional dance training, and Ailey Extension offers dance and fitness classes to the general public. (Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg Businessweek, is a supporter of the AAADT.)

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