Minisode: Mickalene Thomas on Alvin Ailey

[WADE IN THE WATER]

Narrator: Welcome to Artists Among Us Minisodes from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Alvin Ailey edition. We will be exploring the new Edges of Ailey exhibition, or as curator Adrienne Edwards calls it, “extravaganza,” dedicated to the life, dances, and enduring legacy of the artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey.

The exhibition will be on view at the Whitney through February 9th. In this minisode, the artist Mickalene Thomas recalls her first encounter with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the influence it's had on her life and work. Thomas, whose paintings, photographs, and collages often depict strong, bejeweled Black women in colorful, dynamic settings, has a new commission on view in the exhibition. The large-scale work brings together imagery of Mr. Ailey's peer, the great modern dance innovator Katherine Dunham, with his iconic work for the Ailey Company, Revelations. Dunham is best known for introducing African, Caribbean, and South American styles and traditions into the lexicon of modern dance, while Ailey's Revelations is a meditation on the Black American spiritual experience rooted in the choreographer's Southern Baptist upbringing. Taken together, as Thomas does in her lilac hued and rhinestone studded work, they speak to the outsized role that dance and its innovators have played in shaping Thomas's own artistic life.

[WADE IN THE WATER]

Mickalene Thomas: When I moved to New York in ‘95 to go to Pratt Institute, I had a friend who was very involved with dance. She was a dancer herself. She, I think, took some dance classes with Ailey. And she was like, oh, you gotta come to this performance with me. And I just remember just being like, whoa, this is like, next level. And for me also, it was being in New York, an emerging artist at the time, and seeing a production on that level with so many incredible African American dancers. When I saw Revelations, it was kind of, for me, like this out-of-body experience because it felt so familiar and it felt so at home. It felt like I understood the journey of our people and what they've gone through. I felt like he was really holding a mirror up to, like, what we've endured and where we are and where we're going. That we can get through this, like there's this moment of recognition for ourselves. And so for me, it's a real deep spiritual thing. I think of my grandmothers. I think of, like, all of the women in my life. I think of my mother, I think of my aunties, and I love that. And I think for the work that I presented here with Katherine Dunham as the subject, I really wanted to personify that essence that isn't always easy to articulate because it's an experience. And I think Revelations is like an experience. I think that's why it stays with me. And it stayed with me with the connection with Katherine Dunham and Ailey, because I feel like he learned a lot from her when it came to the spirit. Like, bringing the spirit. And to the physical movement of dance. And that's what I think Revelations does. It brings it home. It grounds you. It's the foundation.

I've always loved dance, but I think that's when I really fell in love with it. Because one thing about dance that I respond to is that it's movement and space. Sculptural, you know. It's physical. It's like this sort of spiritual relationship with your body, to move it in ways and space and have the viewer see you doing that in real time. And some of the movements you know are challenging. And when I see dancers, I have a real response to it physically. And I also think, oh, I want to do that. I want to, I want to dance like that. I want to move like that. I want my limbs to feel like they can do all of these things that I know that they can't because I don't have the training. And I still, I go to dance. I take dance classes like Mark Morris. And, you know, I've taken some classes at Alvin Ailey just because I like to be able to understand my body in the same way, you know, which is, it's a language, right? It's a language with your body. Like, your brain is telling your body to do something in space and you're able to do it. And it's like, wow.

[WADE IN THE WATER]

What have I taken away from dance and brought to my art practice? It's different because it doesn't look like dance, but it does have a lot of layers and movement and things that are in it, the collaging. So I think there's something analogous to it. There's a relationship to dance. Oftentimes, I think some of my gestural marks and linear marks are about a particular movement that I want the viewer to feel. It's not like a whole dance in my space of my studio. But it's a part of my life. It's an important part of my life. I will go to a dance performance before going to the movies.

[WADE IN THE WATER]

Alvin Ailey was an innovator, a shapeshifter. I think he is just a genius at his art form, and I think the Whitney Museum of American Art is an important place to consider Ailey because he's an American artist, right? And he's created American dance for all of us. I think anyone, any person who's interested in creativity can take away a sense of being authentic, and just, relationships with others. That's your foundation, is your relationships with others. 

[WADE IN THE WATER]

Narrator:  Artists Among Us: Edges of Ailey Minisodes are produced by SandenWolff with the Whitney Museum of American Art. Anne Byrd, Nora Gomez-Strauss, Kyla Mathis-Angress, Emma Quaytman, and Emily Stoller-Patterson.