As a young dancer, Alvin Ailey was lithe, handsome and much sought after. But artistically he felt that he was stepping on his own toes. He wanted to be a choreographer and build a new dance company. That company's mission would be to sum up the dance heritage of Ailey's fellow blacks, to express "the exuberance of [the Negro's] jazz, the ecstasy of his spirituals and the dark rapture of his blues." In 1958, when Ailey was 27, he got the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater off the ground. Yet if Ailey today occupies...
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