Dancin' to Freedom: A Historical Analysis of the Rise of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

37 Pages·2015·2.41 MB·English

by  Deborah Obalil '95

Illinois Wesleyan University
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Honors Projects History Department
5-1995
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Deborah Obalil '95
Illinois Wesleyan University
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Recommended Citation
Obalil '95, Deborah, "Dancin' to Freedom: A Historical Analysis of the Rise of the Alvin
Ailey American Dance Theater" (1995). Honors Projects. 26.
https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/history_honproj/26
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The cultural heritage of the American Negro is -one
of America's richest treasures. From his roots as a slave,
the American Negro-sometimes sorrowing, sometimes
jubilant, but always hopeful-has created a legacy of
music and dance which have touched, illuminated, and
influenced the most remote preserves of world
civilization. I and my dance theater celebrate, in our
programme, this trembling beauty. We bring to you the
exuberance of his· jazz, the ecstasy of his spirituals, and
the dark rapture of his blues.
-Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Program Notet
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was founded in New
York City in 1958. It was the creative product of Alvin Ailey, a
young African-American dancer whose early childhood years were
spent picking cotton, and it consisted of six additional African
American dancers. While it was not the first company of its kind, it
would grow to become one of America's leading modern dance
companies. Considering the times in which it began, and the fact that
many young dance companies never make it beyond local
performance seasons, it is amazing that the Alvin Ailey American
Dance Theater grew beyond its meager beginnings in 1958.
Less than one year earlier in September 1957, a federal court
ord.ered the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas desegregated
III
accordance with the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of
Education decision declaring segregation unconstitutional. The
opening week of school at Little Rock's Central High School became
1Jacqueline Quinn Moore Latham, "A Biographical Study of the Lives
and Contributions of Two Selected Contemporary Black Male Dance Artists
Arthur Mitchell and Alvin Ailey-in the Idioms of Ballet and Modem Dance,
Respectively," Ph.D. diss., Texas Women's University, 1973, 672.
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the scene of mob violence as nme African-American students
attempted to attend school. The situation received national media
attention as it became nearly a personal conflict of wills and power
between Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus and President Eisenhower.
Faubus was using a unit of the National Guard to prevent the
African-American students from entering the school. Eisenhower,
after attempting to persuade Faubus to withdraw the National Guard,
federalized the state reserve units and ordered part of the 101st
Airborne Division to Little Rock. It was only with this federal
protection that the nine students were able to desegregate Central
High School.2 This is only one example, but it clearly demonstrates
the strong racial tensions present in American society. The United
States of the late 1950s was not a place highly receptive to an
African-American dance company whose works centered on
.southern African-American life.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater struggled for many
years on the fringe of artistic society. Their first performance in
1958 was at New York's 92nd Street YMHA. "It was common, in
those days, for young choreographers to do concerts at the Young
Men's Hebrew Association on Ninety-second Street and Lexington
Avenue," writes Ailey in his autobiography. "The management made
it easy for young choreographers, since their work could be
performed without costing the YMHA a lot of money."3 In 1960, the
2 Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights
Movement (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990), 12.
3 Alvin Ailey with A. Peter Bailey, Revelations, (New York: Carol
Publishing -Group, 1995), 89-90.
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company's season consisted of precisely two performances--one at
the Theresa Kaufman Auditorium and one at the 92nd Street "Y".4 In
these first few years of the company's existence, the mainstream
press paid no attention. It was not until September 1963 that the
company was reviewed in the New York Times. However, the reVIew
was for a performance in Rio de Janeiro, and it was far from the
glowing reviews the company would receive in the future.5 Despite
the times in which it began, the Ailey company is now a highly
respected, critically-acclaimed modern dance company which is also
a popular success. To speak of the popular and critical success of the
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater without understanding and
taking into consideration the civil rights movement would be a
significant oversight. Furthermore, to speak··of the cultural and
artistic segments of the civil rights movement without including
Alvin Ailey and his dance company would be ignoring a major
cultural componel1t of the African-American community. The civil
rights movement-its ideals, successes, and failures-greatly affected
both Ailey and the success of his dance company.
One may ask why a dance company would be a subject worthy
of historical analysis. It is because dance, and a society's reaction to
it, are important cultural indicators. As a part of culture, dance is
both acted upon by other aspects of a society (e.g. economics, politics)
and acts upon those same aspects. Anthropologist Anya Peterson
Royce writes that "because dance is part of culture, it is subject to the
4 Joseph H. Mazo, "Ailey & Company," Horizon 27 (July/August 1984): 21.
5 "Rio Festival Views Alvin Ailey Dancers," New York Times, 6 September
1963, 35.
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same forces of change as any other aspect of culture. Therefore,
"6
social change, both great and small, can be seen in the dance created
by a society. "Much about change in dance form and culture is
applicable to culture change in general . . .. In some cases dance
is a readily observable microcosm of what is happening in the larger
social and cultural context."7 For these reasons, dance is a valid
indicator of a collective people's experience within a society and can
be used as an historical tool to aid in the understanding of social
change.
Dance is a form of communication; it is body language taken to
a greater extreme. In all societies, the physical interaction between
people can be as important, if not more important, than the verbal
and written communication which takes place. Dance is this physical
interaction, this body language, intensified. As with other
expressions in a. society, "dance tends to be a testament of values,
beliefs, attitudes, andemotions.'18 Dance, like other arts, is a medium
through which·the creator and performer (sometimes, but not
always, one and the same) can express themselves to the audience.
How dance communicates lies in the kinesthetic and the
multisensory nature of dance. Anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna
states that "dance is an autonomic system with multisensory
immediacy that causes excitement, fear, and pleasure for performers
6 Anya Peterson Royce, The Anthropology of Dance (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1977), 106.
7 Ibid., 11O.
8 Judith Lynne Hanna, To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal
Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 28.
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and observers. Dance is couched in social situations and belief
systems generating energy and releasing inhibitory mechanisms.
"9
Royce agrees with Hanna's conclusion on this point, saying, "It is
perhaps this capacity to assault all of one's senses simultaneously
that makes dance such a potent, often threatening, vehicle of
expression. She also states that a kinesthetic connection exists
"10
between the observer and performer. "It would not be exaggeration
to suggest that this kinesthetic activity [dance] generates kinesthetic
responses in the viewer although they generally are more restrained
and less conscious than those of the performer." The movement
11
energy itself, attacking all the senses simultaneously, gives dance the
power of communication.
Power is at the center of dance's position in culture. Dance
IS
recognized in many cultures as a very powerful medium of
expression. Its multisensory nature makes it possible for performers
to seduce viewers through their movement.12 The sense of
community evoked through dance also gives it power. Hanna writes,
"Westerners recognize that dance provokes a sense of personal and
group power for performer and observer alike .... The subjects
"13
of power and dance are intertwined, so much so that it is difficult to
9 Ibid., 146-147.
10 Royce, Anthropology of Dance, 200.
11 Ibid., 197.
12 Hanna, To Dance Is Human, 89.
13 Ibid., 128.
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find literature on dance which does not mention power-either that
which dance wields, or that which is used against dance.
In The Performer-Audience Connection, Hanna early on
discusses dance and power relations. She claims that dancers have
the power to .influence an audience's attitudes, opinions, and feelings.
The human body has both real and symbolic power,and this is the
source of a dancer's power. "A lively, skilled dancer epitomizes
power and the strength and discipline most ordinary people ·feel they
lack," according to Hanna.l4 The power that dance has to make "a
strong and lasting impact upon a viewer," connects it to other sources
of power in a society, specifically economic and political.15
This connection to economic and political power is integral
when studying the dance of a culture or society. Joyce
Aschenbrenner, a dance researcher, states, "In a complex society, art
involves and presupposes political and economic power, as well as
cultural autonomy-the freedom to pursue alternative expressions."16
Hanna supports this theory, explaining that dance may function as a
political stabilizer by releasing and neutralizing socially produc.e.d
tensions, or as a political agitator as a vehicle of self-assertion.!
7
14 Judith Lynne Hanna, The Performer-Audience Connection: Emotion
to Metaphor in Dance and Society (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983),
8.
15 Ibid., 23.
16 Joyce Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham: Reflections on the Social
and Political Contexts of Afro-American Dance (New York: Congress of
Research in Dance, 1981), 23.
17 Hanna, To Dance Is Human, 142.
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Because of this political power, dance is often the object of censorship
or suppressIOn.
The importance of dance and other arts in a society can be seen
through the actions of its government. Whether they are efforts to
support or suppress, the amount .of energy put into these actions a
IS
fairly accurate measurement of the society's value placed upon the
impact of the arts. In the case of Ailey, the government strongly
supported the company. In the early stages of its development, the
company performed abroad on its first tour under the Kennedy
administration's International Exchange Program.I8 The company
was once agam sponsored by the government in tours abroad to
Dakar and Senegal in 1966, and to the Soviet Union in 1970.1
9
Economic support is also a way to measure the value of dance
m a society, and is another way of exerting power over dance. As
stated before, dance sometimes challenges·the current political and
economic structures of a society. "Such challenges may be monitored
by those in power, through controlling financial support and by
means of a 'culturaL establishment' operating through the popular
media." The role of the popular media is evident in the case of the
20
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The less controversial the
company became, the more press coverage it received, as will be
shown later in the paper.
18 Mazo, "Ailey & Company," 23.
19 Ibid., 24; and Judith Jamison with Howard Kaplan, Dancing Spirit: An
Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 122.
20 Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham, 18.
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The Ailey company did not receIve widespread economIC
support by means of a paying audience until ten years after its
formation. In fact, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater received
acceptance abroad much before it became a standard segment of the
American dance season. The company's first tour was in southeast
Asia and Australia under the Kennedy administration's International
Exchange Program, as stated earlier.21 The company continued to
travel abroad before finding a permanent home in New York City in
1968. They performed in Rio in 1963, Dakar and Senegal in 1966,
and at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968.22
The progress of the civil rights movement helps to explain why
an American dance company financed by the federal government to
travel abroad, where it received widespread acceptance, did not have
a full New York season until 1968. As stated earlier, the civil rights
movement was a non-violent movement in the late 1950s and early
1960s which faced violent opposition. Key civil rights actions during
the early years of the Ailey company's existence included the sit-in
movement beginning in 1961; the freedom rides; the grass-roots
voter registration drives in the rural South known commonly as
freedom summer; the Albany, Georgia, movement; and the great
march in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. All of the aforementioned
actions became scenes of nationally televised violence. Students at
sit-ins across the country were beaten. One violent attack against
the freedom riders occurred in Anniston, Alabama. Rider James Peck
21 Mazo, "Ailey & Company," 23.
22 Ibid., 24.
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