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Pride Month Spotlight: Alvin Ailey

In honor of Pride Month, BR Pride, Blank Rome’s LGBTQ+ affinity group, will be highlighting the contributions and achievements of Black LGBTQ individuals of the past and present.

In our last installment of this series, we are shining our spotlight on Alvin Ailey (1931–1989). We have enjoyed bringing this series to all of you and appreciate all of the positive feedback and engagement the series has sparked.  We look forward to continuing engaging with you and hope to see you next week for our virtual fireside chat with Human Rights Campaign president, Alphonso David.

Alvin Ailey was a dancer, director, choreographer, and activist. He founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) and The Ailey School to support Black dancers and to present the African-American experience through dance. His ballets, such as Revelations, Blues Suite, and Cry are among his most famous works.

Ailey was born during the Great Depression in racially segregated Rogers, Texas, and was raised by a single mother who struggled as a Black woman to find work to support herself and her son. Eventually, his mother left Texas for Los Angeles, in search of greater job prospects. Ailey soon joined her, but his early life in the rural south would later shape his art.

His masterpiece, Revelations, is widely recognized as one of the most performed dance works in the world. Set to spirituals, song-sermons, gospel, and holy blues and influenced by Ailey’s own childhood, it presents a vision of an historical African-American experience from a church-inspired perspective. Revelations was also inspired by the works of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, two Black authors and social activists. Divided into three parts—Pilgrim of Sorrow, Take Me to the Water, and Move, Move Move—Revelations moves from the suffering of slavery, through a ceremonial baptism, to a joyful celebration of gospel music and community.  Ailey first produced Revelations when he was only 29 years old. It remains the signature work of the AAADT. 

The AAADT made its first appearance in 1958 when Ailey and a group of Black modern dancers performed in New York at the 92nd Street Y.  Ailey founded the AAADT as a company dedicated to contributing to the American modern dance heritage and preserving and presenting the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience. It also provided a vehicle for Black dancers, who were frequently denied opportunities in other companies. By 1960, the AAADT was a resident company of the 51st Street YWCA’s Clark Center for the Performing Arts, its first permanent residence. In 1969, Ailey opened The Ailey School in Brooklyn, which offers professional training for experienced dancers as well as recreational classes for dance enthusiasts of all skill levels. 

Ailey was an early advocate of programs promoting arts in education, particularly those benefiting underserved communities. He was awarded numerous honors, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 1988 in recognition of his lifetime of contribution to American culture. In 2008, Congress passed a resolution designating AAADT a “vital American cultural ambassador to the world.”  In 2014, Ailey posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of his contributions and commitment to civil rights and dance in America.

Ailey was notoriously private about his personal life and remained closeted through his early death from AIDS-related complications, though he reportedly asked his doctor to announce his death was due to other causes in order to protect his mother from the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS.  Last year, Ailey was inducted into the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood honoring LGBTQ individuals who have made significant contributions in their fields.