A detailed and well-rounded biography of Ailey (1931-89), the
celebrated African-American dancer and choreographer. New York
Times dance critic Dunning ("But First a School," 1985) here
considers a subject whose volatility and well-known penchant for
privacy to some extent obstruct her desire to explain him. Born in
a rural cabin near Rogers, Tex., Ailey was abandoned by his father
when he was three months old. As a boy, he followed his mother from
job to job until they ended up in Los Angeles in 1942. Alley the
teenager was magnetized by poetry, music, theater, movies, and
dance - especially by the wrought Caribbean extravaganzas of
Katherine Dunham. Alley studied dance locally with Lester Horton,
eventually joined and choreographed for his company, then left for
the East to appear in the show House of Flowers. His tumultuously
productive professional life ultimately saw the triumph of his
vision of African-American identity in such dances as Cry and
Revelations and the achievement of interracial artistic harmony in
his integrated company, the Alvin Alley American Dance Theater.
Though the book is held back at times by the spirit of boosterism
(e.g., "The kid from Texas had climbed to another summit"), usually
Dunning takes care not to romanticize the endless strains and
difficulties involved with sustaining choreographic creation and
long-term institutional stability. Nor does she neglect the
paradoxes of Alley, a manic-depressive and often self-destructive
man whose drug habit and promiscuous erotic love for men raised
eyebrows and occasionally led to skirmishes with police. The best
part of the book may be its last quarter, when Dunning is compelled
to confront the dancer's secrecies head-on, and when she movingly
narrates his decline and death from AIDS. One is left with the
impression that perhaps no one understood Alley, not even Ailey
himself. But there is plenty of reason to wish we did, and Dunning
provides a very useful point of entry. (Kirkus Reviews)
Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) was a choreographic giant in the modern
dance world and a champion of African-American talent and culture.
His interracial Alvin Ailey American Dance theatre provided
opportunities to black dancers and choreographers when no one else
would. His acclaimed Revelations" remains one of the most performed
modern dance pieces in the twentieth century. But he led a tortured
life, filled with insecurity and self-loathing. Raised in poverty
in rural Texas by his single mother, he managed to find success
early in his career, but by the 1970s his creativity had waned. He
turned to drugs, alcohol, and gay bars and suffered a nervous
breakdown in 1980. He was secretive about his private life,
including his homosexuality, and, unbeknownst to most at the time,
died from AIDS-related complications at age 58.Now, for the first
time, the complete story of Ailey's life and work is revealed in
this biography. Based on his personal journals and hundreds of
interviews with those who knew him, including Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Judith Jamison, Lena Horne, Katherine Dunham, Sidney Poitier, and
Dustin Hoffman, Alvin Ailey is a moving story of a man who wove his
life and culture into his dance.
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