Edges of Ailey

Sept 25, 2024–Feb 9, 2025

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Alvin Ailey saw collaboration as a key to creative potential. He once remarked: “I love the idea of people coming and working together . . . start with an empty space, and a body or two, and we say, ‘Carve this space.’” This understanding guided his way of working, namely through the repertory model that he pioneered. Ailey was the first modern dance choreographer whose company did not perform his works exclusively. Aspiring to create a “living repository [of] classics and curiosities,” he actively brought in existing and newly commissioned works by other choreographers alongside his own dances. This platform proved to be a lifeline for Black dancers and choreographers, inspired in large part by Ailey’s own experiences as an emerging Black artist in New York, where he and his fellow Black dancers were met with segregation and scant opportunities.

Ailey’s collaborations did not only fall within dance’s purview. He was actively involved with writers, musicians, and artists, including Maya Angelou, Romare Bearden, Duke Ellington, Geoffrey Holder, and Langston Hughes, among others, whose ideas echoed and amplified Ailey’s own interests. Ailey enlisted them to dance and choreograph, as well as to create set designs, musical scores, and costumes. Various art spaces and nightlife scenes were equally fruitful sites of exchange, from the Nuyorican Poets Café on the Lower East Side, which Ailey frequented, to the famed club Studio 54, where Ailey II dancers performed for its opening night.

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Edges of Ailey

Ailey’s Collaborators

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Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, Alvin Ailey Dancer Wearing Studio 54 Opening Night Costume with Graffiti backdrop. New York City, May 1977

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