The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founded in 1958, has been living perennially in the social calendars of culturally devoted African American New Yorkers for decades—especially its annual springtime Ailey Spirit Gala and its Christmas holiday schedule at City Center, events as reliable as the dance troupe’s classic Revelations.
But not since an outdoor Hudson Yards screening of the 2021 Ailey documentary has such a collective celebration of choreographer Alvin Ailey taking place on the scale of the newly opened Edges of Ailey. This must-see exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art pays excellent tribute to Ailey’s dances, influences, legacy, life and times through archival film footage, paintings and more.
Checking your phone’s photo library is a foolproof way to determine what grabs you the most after any exhibit. With all the offerings on display at Edges of Ailey, my personal photos app was overflowing.
There are pictures of pictures: framed portraits of Alvin Ailey as a young man. There are paintings by William H. Johnson depicting police brutality, Black rural life and city life, as well as a favorite Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, 1983’s Hollywood Africans. I recorded an influential, energetic dance scene from Carmen Jones, choreographed by Herbert Ross, an interview with Duke Ellington—a perpetual source of music for Ailey—and glass-encased, vintage-edition books by Etheridge Knight, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Albert Murray.
I also snapped the “too long; didn’t read” wall-printed text with headlines announcing Black Women, Black Migration, Black Spirituality, Black Liberation and Black Music. Speaking of which, I personally discovered songs timeless music during Ailey performances over the years, like Alice Coltrane’s “Something About John Coltrane,” used during Ailey’s Cry, a 1971 piece dedication to his mother, and Jhené Aiko’s “While We’re Young,” featured in the Kyle Abraham-choreographed Are You in Your Feelings, staged at Ailey since 2022. At Ailey, music and dance naturally go hand in hand.
A looping montage of multiple performances of Cry also runs on an 18-channel video installation above displayed artwork by the likes of painter Wadsworth Jarrell. Edges of Ailey easily wins the argument for Ailey as “among the most culturally and historically impactful artistic figures in the United States and the world.” Curators’ use of the color red throughout the exhibit (more the shade of a pleasing burgundy) is meant to evoke Ailey’s description of his work as “blood memories”—conjuring recollections of his native Rogers, Texas, during the Great Depression of his youth.
The first large-scale museum exhibit celebrating Ailey’s lifework would be incomplete without actual live dancing; the Ailey company will join the Whitney’s live performance program for five weeks with over 90 performances scheduled, featuring dancers from both the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, its second company of fresh talent and up-and-coming choreographers.
Told with an enlightening array of personal notebooks and letters, archival posters and Playbill programs, recorded interviews and related artwork from Kara Walker, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence and others, Edges of Ailey serves as the perfect lead-in to December’s Alvin Ailey Holiday Season.
Everyone interested in masters of African American fine arts should flock to Edges of Ailey through February 9, 2025, and a 2024 Ailey City Center performance, stat.
