A Visual Interpretation of the Black Experience at Edges of Ailey

It was in California that he first became interested and engaged in theater and was exposed to performers like Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and others. In 1949, a friend and fellow dancer– Carmen De Lavallade– introduced him to the modern dance studio of Lester Horton, and dance became Ailey’s passion. 

He studied with various teachers and also pursued writing and languages, before eventually moving to New York and founding his own dance company in 1958, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. 

The exhibition at the Whitney Museum is unique in many ways. Firstly, it pays homage to an artist who used his body and the bodies of others to tell visually-lyrical stories through dance. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater broke boundaries and provided opportunities for Black dancers to explore modern movements under his leadership. 

Looking at the choreographer through several lenses, the exhibition is broken down into ten sections: Southern Imagery, Black Spirituality, Black Migration, Black Liberation, Black Women, Ailey’s Collaborators, Black Music, Ailey’s Influences, After Ailey, and a Performance Program. 

The fifth floor of the museum is organized as an open floor plan with many freestanding artworks placed throughout and a large-scale video stretching across half of the circumference of the gallery. Each curated section reflects on moments of history through painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography– the lifetime of Alvin Ailey, who died due to complications from AIDS in 1989, at the age of 58. 

Alvin Ailey’s work visually interpreted the Black experience wholly– the challenges and joys– as a way to move the dial forward. His life was not in the periphery, but out front, bold, and dynamic.

A gay man with a penchant for spirituality, Ailey kept diaries, many of which are included in vitrines in the show. Written in his own hand, his internal dialogue made external, we are able to read the thoughts of a man who used life as a starting point, death as a portal, and a myriad of other metaphorical choices to connect body and mind to movement. In an excerpt from an entry written in 1963 and his visit to the Rio de Janeiro International Arts Festival titled, How To Play Drums:

“…pick up a tiny stone—throw it out towards an island—(A world you know is there but cannot see—) Wait and see if the waves bring it back—(They do not) Splash in the water like a Black fish—Walk slowly home thru the green leaves, Become emerald with night—Then—Try to run away when they come for you with their guns and nets—Feel awash in terror as they lasso you together with others of your kind in a dark ship's hold—”

Movement inspired by the transatlantic slave trade merged with a modern dance aesthetic were the markers in establishing his legacy. That said, Edges of Ailey visits a range of performances that were the first of their kind. 

Curator Adrienne Edwards weaves a tale that is a portrait of a man established in his practice, while concurrently shifting the gaze of those present to the art of others. From an early, colorful oil painting by Loïs Mailou Jones, “Africa” (1935), to a newly commissioned work titled “A Knave Made Manifest” (2024) by artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, there is a volleying through time where we see what inspired Ailey. In turn, we also get to see work by contemporary artists who were inspired by him. 

Yiadom-Boakye’s “Africa” features four full-sized Black male dancers participating in what appears to be a dance rehearsal. There is a timeless quality to her painting as a figure in the foreground, clad in white tights revealing his muscular legs, turns in pirouette, arms outstretched.

We can almost imagine this figure to be Alvin Ailey, or an avatar of sorts. Every work in the show is a jewel, a notation of the curator’s design, functioning as a vivisection into the complexities of a dancer, an advocate, and a gem multifaceted and still shimmering through choreography practiced today.