Podcast: Alvin Ailey: Poetry In Movement
By Ashley Salem
Alvin Aliey photo credit: Google images
Blood memories. Memories that can harbor joy, pain, heroic courage, sloshing rage, and everything in between. These memories are ones that have an impact on you; carrying layers of intricate meaning. Alvin Ailey’s voice, work, and expression inform the newly released Sundance documentary entitled AILEY, wherein the theme of blood memories run deep.
Most known for his work and legacy in dance and choreography, In AILEY, those who come to share in the experience of this film get to know the man who created true poetry on the stage.
Through snippets of treasured, intimate interviews with Ailey’s family, friends, and his company, we see his love for his mother and friends. His dedication and relentless commitment to his work are referred to as being “possessed“. He dives into the exploration of truth, vulnerability, and the Black experience. Watching this film, I saw the footage of Ailey watching, breathing, and living through his dancers. Encouraging his dancers to be brave, bold, and full in their displays of what they were feeling, and translating what he was feeling.
Of many favorite moments during the film, there is one segment in particular where Ailey remembers the dancing, atmosphere and joy of Honkey Tonk. He noted that this was where Black people got together on the weekends.
“A time of love, and caring,
people didn't have much but they had each other.”
-Alvin Ailey (On the dancing and fun at the Honkey Tonk)
He went on to share about movement in dance being able to tell a story. This made me smile. I recalled a time in which I was volunteering years ago for a local event. While moving some materials to another room, I caught a glance of a young man teaching a small group of dancers choreography. After finishing my task, I laid against the door frame to watch. The man spoke to the students about how each move, meant something. He demonstrated one move and relayed that the movement was portraying picking up wheat from the fields while bringing attention to another move that was symbolic of welcoming the men back to the village.
It was then for me, that I began to understand storytelling in the context of dance and motion.
When Black Panther, Fred Hampton was murdered, this impacted Ailey. The documentary showed footage of Ailey working with one of his dancers on a piece as she took his direction and channeled a reflection back to him of what he was experiencing surrounding Hampton’s death. He kneeled on the floor beside her as he told her, what he wanted to feel. The struggles of Being a Black male exploring relationships, exploring himself, and navigating this mostly from an emotionally alone space, was not easy for Aliey. For most of his life in the public eye, the magnificence that became The Alvin Aliey, came with the pressure to constantly be on at the expense of his personhood.
AILEY is playing at Film Stream’s Ruth Sokolof Theater until August 19th.