“Alvin Ailey is black and common,” says the actor Cicely Tyson as she presents him with a lifetime achievement award in a clip from 1988 that opens this considerate documentary concerning the African American dancer and choreographer. Movie-maker Jamila Wignot pays explicit consideration to the specificity of Ailey’s black influences: the church, blues music and his southern upbringing, all of which knowledgeable his best-known work, Revelations (1960).
Although Ailey was broadly acclaimed, interviews together with his former dancers, together with Judith Jamison and George Faison, reveal the extent of his private alienation. Being “the one one” within the predominantly white subject of contemporary dance was just one side of his plight. Wignot subtly teases out the truth that regardless of having relationships with males, Ailey was not built-in into the queer group. He died from Aids-related problems, aged 58, in 1989.
Ailey’s story is interspersed with rehearsal scenes of a brand new work celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the corporate he based. But behind-the-scenes photos of the dancers making ready for Lazarus are by no means as fascinating or as sleek because the archive footage of Ailey himself.
In cinemas and on demand
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