Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | D | Dance Magazine

The miracle workers: the Ailey company's dream team celebrates 50 years of his vision.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Sitting in an airport lounge while on tour, and listening to a song on her laptop computer, Hope Boykin started to cry. What she had on her laptop was a download of Sweet Honey In The Rock, the richly harmonizing, a cappella women singers with whom the dancer was creating a premiere for the Ailey company's 50th-anniversary season. During the planning stages, Boykin had told Sweet Honey about the three generations of her family sharing a house and keeping watch over one another--and about her mom. A short while later, the musicians gave her a song called "Go in Grace" from which the new dance would draw its name. "I'm listening to this song at the airport, and then all of a sudden there's this line which says, 'Remember what your mother said: Don't forget to pray,' " Boykin explains, still stunned. "It was one of those moments that made you remember."

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater seems adept at prompting moments of recall like this one. Matthew Rushing, among the Ailey company's best-loved stars, recalls his first impressions of the troupe as a teenager in Los Angeles. "When I saw the ballet Cry, choreographed by Mr. Ailey, I saw images of my mother, my grandmother and aunt," Rushing says. "When I saw Revelations, I saw images from my own childhood growing up in church. I always feel that Alvin Ailey is a part of my identity. It's who I am."

To audiences too, the company offers powerful flashes of self-recognition. Whether or not these epiphanies relate to childhood church memories, the Ailey company's soulfulness and fierce virtuosity have won enthusiastic audiences wherever they go--and they tour 25 weeks a year. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, Ailey is thriving. Its financial picture is strong (or as stong as it can be in these times), its visibility is mushrooming via prime-time television, and the troupe has ah exciting season planned for New York City Center with Oprah Winfrey as an honored guest at its gala.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Earlier this year artistic director Judith Jamison announced the anniversary season from the...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!