Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey ( born January 5, 1931 in Rogers, Texas; † December 1, 1989 in Manhattan, New York) was an American dancer and choreographer.

Life

Alvin Ailey was an African-American dancer and choreographer of modern dance. He founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. At 58, he died of AIDS.

Ailey was born to his then seventeen -year-old mother, Lula Cooper, in Rogers, Texas. Early on, his interest developed into dance. In 1943 he moved with his mother to Los Angeles. Once there, he immediately began dance lessons with choreographer Katherine Dunham to take and then later at Lester Horton. In parallel with this instruction Ailey attended college courses in Romance languages. Several times Ailey was also enrolled at UCLA, Los Angeles City College and at the University of California at Berkeley. He studied the texts of authors such as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Carson McCullers. Nevertheless, Ailey was particularly impressed by the choreography Hortons. These were based on classical plays, paintings by Paul Klee, poems by Garcia Lorca and the music of Duke Ellington and Igor Stravinsky as well as on Mexican affairs. As Lester Horton finally died in 1953, Ailey took over with 22 years of its successor. He became the director and choreographer Lester Horton Dance Theater of. Within a year, he created three new works for Hortons Company: Creation of the World, According to St. Francis, and Mourning Morning.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

1958 Ailey founded his own dance company in which he worked mainly African Americans. One of his most important productions was Langston Hughes's Jericho - Jim Crow (1964).

By funded by the U.S. authorities, international tours of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater of modern dance was popular around the world. One result of these tours was Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations, Ailey's based on personal experiences growing up about it than African Americans in the South. The piece is one of the best-known and most-watched modern choreographies.

Ailey was set by the renaming of West 61st Street (between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue in New York City ) in " Alvin Ailey Way " a monument; 1989-2005 and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was located here until it moved to a newer and larger building between West 55th Street and Ninth Avenue. 1988 Ailey also received a tribute at the Kennedy Center.