Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(Mostly about dance and male bodies.)

Passed through several Facebook sites, most immediately Michael Palmer’s, this fabulous photo of four dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, captured flying in mid-air:

(#1)

Other male dancers flying in mid-air were featured in my 1/10/16 posting “Dance Time”. All of these photos are tributes to the skill of the dancers, the choreographer, and the photographer, who undoubtedly had to have the dancers run through their performances many times to get these remarkable shots.

Two more from the men in the company:

(#2)

(#3)

About the company, from Wikipedia:

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is a modern dance company based in New York, New York. It was founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey. It is [now] made up of 30 dancers, led by artistic director Robert Battle and associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya.

Alvin Ailey and a group of young Black modern dancers first performed at New York’s 92nd Street Young Men’s Hebrew Association (92nd Street Y), under the name Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), in March 1958. At this point in time, Alvin Ailey was the company’s director, choreographer, and principal dancer. The company started as an ensemble of only seven dancers

And about Ailey:

Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989 [note: he died young, of complications of HIV/AIDS]) was an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. His company gained the nickname “Cultural Ambassador to the World” because of its extensive international touring. Ailey’s choreographic masterpiece Revelations [1960] is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance.

I saw the company in performance only once (with my man Jacques) and am embarrassed to admit I don’t recall what was on the program, only that we were blown away by the story-telling in dance and by the energy of the performances.

This entry was posted on June 11, 2016 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Dance, Dancers, Language and the body. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.