Edges of Ailey: A Celebration of Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and The Ailey School. Photo by Natasha Moustache
From September 25th until February 9th, 2025, Edges of Ailey will inhabit the entirety of the 18,000 square-foot fifth floor of Manhattan’s Whitney Museum. Consisting of two parts, it is the first commemoration of this size and breadth of choreographer and director Alvin Ailey. The first part is the exhibit itself, a collection of a seemingly endless variety of primary sources- including paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs and posters covering the sapphire painted walls. Thousands of visitors have come to read his handwriting, watch him and his dancers prance, contract, and lateral T across the walls through video projections, and hear his voice in the decades-worth of interview footage describing his many foundational inspirations: one being his childhood as a Black and queer boy in the Gospel Church of rural Texas.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and The Ailey School. Photo by Natasha Moustache
The second part, two floors below in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater, is where Ailey dancers have been in residence at the museum to perform and host dance classes, workshops, and activities for visiting families for one week every month. The remaining three weeks are hosted by dozens of associated choreographers such as Bill T. Jones and Ronald K. Brown.
Curated by Adrienne Edwards, the exhibit showcases some of the many mediums that inspired or were inspired by Ailey and his work; including but not limited to filmed performances of the original cast of Revelations (1960), Hermit Songs (1961), and other lesser-known works, unreleased photography, choreographer notes, drawings, scribbles, poems, posters, and programs, and visual art by over eighty artists such as Jean-Michael Basquiat and Romare Bearden. While the exhibit showcases Ailey as a director, dancer, choreographer, businessman, and person, it did not stop there. In line with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s (AADT) mission, this was not just about dance, but about African American life. In Ailey’s words, "One of America's richest treasures was the cultural heritage of the African-American — sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful."
Edwards’ careful curation stressed the many themes Ailey and his successors grappled with in launching a dance company that sought to center Blackness as a gift in the concert dance world. His productions were often based in the Southern landscape, with the undercurrent of Black diasporic spiritual worship (existing within and beyond organized religion), and a movement vocabulary that oscillated between struggle and freedom. As Edwards described, Ailey’s work was consistently influenced by Black female colleagues and friends, the fusion of styles from across the diaspora with the help of Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham’s African and Caribbean styles, and the tension between the identities of “Blackness” and “Americanness.”
Edges of Ailey does not quite begin or end with him. It centers Ailey and his company as a catalyst and a creator, but not an origin nor a destination. His company was both derived from and made of history, and every piece of art selected, from Archibald Motley’s 1948 painting “Gettin’ Religion” to the Wadsworth Jarrell’s “Revolutionary (Angela Davis)” (1972), offer a new point of entry through which to understand the outpour of history, soul, and reverence that Ailey and his company draws from.
For purchase on the Whitney Museum website, a book catalog of the archival material and several essays was published alongside the exhibit.
Ailey II's Jordyn White. Photo by Natasha Moustache