This past week Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater launched its holiday season at New York City Center in the most epic way. The company’s opening night gala, along with its entire season, was dedicated to the company’s visionary muse and artistic director, Judith Jamison, who passed away in November.
Jamison danced with the company for 15 years and then became its artistic director for more than two decades. “At the start the choreographers in New York were reluctant to hire someone six feet tall,” said Morgan Freeman when Jamison was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors. “She refused to give up. She refused to go home and relinquish her dreams. So she trouped from audition to audition to audition to audition.”
Ultimately Jamison found her artistic sanctuary in a dance company created by a young dancer and choreographer named Alvin Ailey. In 1971, Clive Barnes wrote about Ailey’s piece Cry for the New York Times in which Jamison had a 16-minute solo. Barnes said that Jamison’s face was a “tragic face, a mask of sorrow. It is a face born to cry the blues, but when she smiles it is with an innocent radiance, a joyfulness that is simple and lovely. And she dances with an articulated beauty…”
During Jamison’s tenure Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continued to blossom, growing its budget and national and international tours. She established the Joan Weill Center for Dance, New York’s largest building devoted to dance.
“Ms. Jamison was Alvin Ailey’s muse, a towering dancer, choreographer, and artistic director whose inspired leadership ensured this company’s place among the great arts institutions in the world,” said Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation‘s board chairwoman, Daria Wallach, before the packed gala crowd at City Center. “As a leader, as she had been as a dancer, she was powerful, creative, and path-breaking. Her deep love of this company and its people permeated every decision she made.”
Gayle King, the evening’s co-chair along with Phylicia Rashād, also shared her joy for Jamison. “She brought out the best in people, simply because she expected the best of people,” said King “There was nobody like her, like that line from Beyoncé says: ‘She’s one of one, she’s number one, she’s the only one.’ Like everyone, I always stood a little straighter when Judith was in the room.”
The gala featured a performance of Cry, which made Jamison a star. A birthday present for his mother, Ailey dedicated the piece to “all black women everywhere, especially our mothers.” The evening’s program also included Ronald K. Brown’s piece Grace, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Grace marries African and American dance and features the music of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” Peven Everett’s song “Gabriel,” and the pulse of Fela Kuti’s Afro-Pop. The piece included a special live performance by Leslie Odom, Jr. and Cécile McLorin Salvant.
The company also danced Alvin Ailey’s seminal work, Revelations, which honors African American cultural heritage and covers wide swaths of emotions from deep grief to unbridled joy. The piece, which contains gospel songs, spirituals and blues music, was described by Ailey as “sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.”
In addition to honoring Jody Gottfried Arnhold for her ferocious commitment to dance education and her lifelong devotion to making it accessible, Alvin Ailey’s new artistic director, Alicia Graf Mack, was also introduced. Mack, who danced with the company for eight years, was recently the dean and director of the Dance Division at the Juilliard School. The night ended with dinner and dancing at the Ziegfeld Ballroom where guests dined on brown butter chicken and apple tarte tartin.
Celebrating Ailey’s rich lineage and legacy was front and center as Jamison’s spirit and passion was present throughout. And after 66 seasons it continues. “Just as sure as if she was standing here, we feel Judith Jamison’s strength and resolve,” said Rashād. “And we know what she would be saying: Keep dancing. Keep striving. Keep teaching. Keep reaching.”