Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey was a closeted homosexual. Fearing stigma, he tried to keep his private life as guarded as possible. He was romantically involved with the political activist, David McReynolds, for some time during the 1950s.

He suffered from AIDS and died on December 1, 1989, at the age of 58. Since there was much stigma associated with AIDS in the 1980s, he had asked his doctor to announce the cause of his death as terminal blood dyscrasia, a rare blood disorder.

Alvin Ailey was born on January 5, 1931, in Texas to a teenage mother Lula Elizabeth Ailey. His father abandoned the family when Alvin was only six months old.

He was born in an era when racial discrimination and violence against African-Americans was common in America. When he was five, his mother was raped by a group of white men which instilled a fear of whites in the young boy; a fear that haunted him for a long time.

In the fall of 1942, Ailey and his mother migrated to Los Angeles, California, in search of a new job for his mother. Here, Ailey was first enrolled in a junior high school which was located in a predominantly white district. Being black, he felt left out and hence, was then sent to a black school.

He graduated from the Thomas Jefferson High School in 1948 where he actively sang spirituals in the glee club and wrote poetry. After graduation, he considered becoming a teacher and attended the University of California in Los Angeles to study languages.

However, Ailey started taking dancing seriously when his school friend, Carmen De Lavallade, introduced him to the Hollywood studio of Lester Horton in 1949. It was then that he began studying modern dance with Horton.

In 1953, Alvin Ailey joined the Horton's Company and gave his first dance performance in Horton's ‘Revue Le Bal Caribe.’ He also got a chance to perform in several Hollywood films. When the sudden death of Horton in the same year left the company without an artistic director, Ailey, then just twenty-two, stepped forward to assume the role.

In 1954, Ailey made his Broadway debut in Truman Capote's short-lived musical ‘House of Flowers.’ In 1957, he was in another Broadway musical, ‘Jamaica’, starring Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban.

He formed his own dance group called the ‘Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’ in 1958. The group gave its inaugural performance on March 30, 1958.

Ailey encouraged multi-racialism and recruited people solely based on their talents. Around this time, he not only created work for his own company, but also choreographed for other dance companies.

In 1960, he premiered ‘Revelations’ through the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. This work, which told the tale of African-American culture and the struggles colored people went through even for their basic rights and freedom, became his signature chorographic work.

Alvin Ailey is best remembered as the founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), a modern dance company based in New York. Ailey created more than 79 dances for his company during his lifetime and the company continues to carry forward his legacy even years after his death. At present, it is led by artistic director Robert Battle and associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya.