Minisode: Matthew Rushing 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 exhibition Edges of Ailey, 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 is on view at the Whitney through February 9. 

In this episode, Matthew Rushing, the Interim Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, takes us back to his first time seeing the company perform as a 12 year old in Los Angeles, an encounter that showed him the power of art and altered the very course of his life.

[WADE IN THE WATER]

Matthew Rushing: I first learned about Mr. Ailey and the company actually through my dance teacher. I was introduced to the arts through an afterschool program. I'm originally from Inglewood, California, a pretty rough neighborhood. My mother put me into an after school program to keep me focused and off the streets. This after school program integrated theater, a little bit of dance. We did a musical. I fell in love with it, but I had not made a decision to become a dancer until my dance teacher told me about the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. My mother took me to the first performance. Of course, it was sold out. It was at the Wiltern Theater, but there was a scalper outside of the theater, and he had two tickets. One was in the front row, and the other one was in the balcony. So my mother gave me the ticket that's in the front row. And I remember the curtain went up, and I remember hearing the dancers breathe as well, and I saw their sweat, and I remember seeing the ballet Cry. I had no idea what the ballet was about. I didn't know that it was Mr. Ailey's tribute to his mother and Black women, but what I experienced was the power of art and storytelling. I saw a woman who immediately started to look like my mother, my aunts, my grandmother. I started seeing images of my childhood and how my mother or other Black women appeared in my childhood, but it was all manifest on the stage. It blew my mind because I felt like somebody knew my history, knew my experiences, and was telling my own story. I was like, how is it possible that my life experience is being danced before me? It felt like it was just for me, that they were dancing. So I think that's what really solidified my whole connection to dance, because my first experience was being affirmed that my own experiences are important enough to be danced about.

To experience that as a young person, it's life-altering. When you see excellence at a certain level, and you see people who look like you in the midst of the excellence, it immediately says “you can do it too.” And at that moment, that's what I felt. I was like, not only do I want to do this, but I want to do it here in this company. I needed technique. I needed training. I had no training up until that point. And I auditioned for the High School for the Arts, got into the High School for the Arts, trained for three years straight. My senior year, I auditioned for this company. Not thinking I would get a place in the company, but at that point, you could get a full scholarship to the school. It just so happened that the director of the school, the late Denise Jefferson, as well as Sylvia Waters, who was the director of Ailey II at that moment, and Judith Jamison, director of First Company, were all at my audition. So I got a full scholarship, and I also got a promised position with Ailey II, and so that's basically how the journey started. Trained at the school for a summer, was in Ailey II for one year, and then became part of the First Company. Eventually choreographed four ballets for the company, promoted to Rehearsal Director in 2010, Associate Artistic Director in 2020, and now I'm Interim Artistic Director.

[WADE IN THE WATER]

If you'd have asked a young Matthew at 12 or 13 if he would be interested in going to see a modern dance concert, my answer would be no. I guess I would assume there was nothing there for me, there was nothing that I could relate to, but that experience that I had at the Wiltern Theater changed all of that.

It actually made it so clear that this whole modern dance thing is not only accessible, it's part of who I want to be. That was a clear epiphany. I was watching who I am and also what I would want to be on stage. I have no doubt that the seat that I'm sitting in right now is exactly where I should be, and it's one of the reasons that I was put onto this Earth, and it was one of the reasons I was given the gift of dance, but I always go back to Mr. Ailey as the entry point. I would have never experienced it if he hadn't done all that he's done. He talked about his roots. He talked about his blood memories. He also talked about the importance of his family being able to come to the theater and understand what they're watching. So it's not a thing of it being an elitist art form. Yes, we're going to aim high, but we're going to speak in a way that everybody can either understand or at least draw their own interpretation from. And I love that accessibility paralleled with integrity, paralleled with excellence. I think he just understood dance and humanity. And when you put those two together, there are no boundaries.

[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.