CMST 3300

April 21, 2013

Ailey, Revelations, & Their Legacy

One may ask why a dance company’s founder, most renowned piece in its repertoire, and the impact it had on the world would be a subject worthy of a historical and cultural analysis. It is because dance, and a society’s reaction to it, are important and cultural indicators. As a part of culture, dance is both acted upon by other aspects of a society and acts upon those same aspects. Because dance is a part of culture, it is subject to the same forces of change as any other aspect of culture. Therefore, social change, both great and small, can be seen in the dance created by a society. Much about change in dance form and culture is applicable to culture change in general. In some cases, dance is a readily observable microcosm of what is happening in the larger social and cultural context. For these reasons, dance is a valid indicator of collective people’s experience within a society and can be used as a historical tool to aid in the understanding of social change. Dance is a form of communication; it is body language taken to a greater extreme. In all societies, the physical interaction between people can be as important, if not more important, than the verbal and written communication, which takes place. Dance is this physical interaction, this body language, intensified. As with other expressions in a society, dance tends to be a testament of values, beliefs, attitudes and emotions. Dance, like other arts is a medium through which the creator and performer can express themselves to the audience. How dance communicates lies in the kinesthetic and the multisensory nature of dance. Dance is an autonomic system with multisensory immediacy that causes excitement, fear, and pleasure for performers and observers. Dance is couched in social situations and belief systems generating energy and releasing inhibitory mechanisms. It is perhaps this capacity to assault all of one’s senses simultaneously that make dance such a potent, often threatening, vehicle of expression. A kinesthetic connection also exists between the observer and performer. It would not be exaggeration to suggest that this kinesthetic activity generates kinesthetic responses in the viewer although they generally are more restrained and less conscious than those of the performer. The movement energy itself, attacking all the senses simultaneously, gives dance the power of communication. Dance as an expression of power began before African Americans were even brought to America as slaves and has continued since then. As cargo on slave ships, African slaves were forced to dance as a form of exercise on the Middle Passage. “Dancing the slaves” was a regular activity. Usually crew members would parade around the deck with whips and force the men slaves to jump in their shackles until their ankles bled. Female slaves were also “danced.” From the beginning of their experience as Americans, slaves experienced dance as an expression of power. Therefore, it is not strange that the slaves used to dance to defy the power held over them. Once the slaves reached North America, they exploited dance as an opportunity to resist domination. Dance was used as a means of solidifying the slave community. Through dance they communicated with each other and the overseers and slave holders didn’t recognize this as a form of social intercourse. After slavery, dance in the African American community remained a vital part of cultural identity and a widespread form of social critique. African Americans consciously realized the capabilities of dance and art as a social force long before the civil rights movement. Leaders in the dance community have attempted, and continue to attempt, to utilize this potential intrinsic in their culture. Power is at the center of dance’s position in culture. Dance is recognized in many cultures as a very powerful medium of expression. Its multisensory capture makes it possible for performers to seduce viewers through their movement. The sense of community evoked through dance also gives it power. Westerners recognize that dance provokes a sense of personal group power for performer and observer alike. The subjects of power and dance are intertwined, so much so that it is difficult to find literature on dance, which does mention power. Dancers have the power to influence an audience’s attitudes, opinions, and feelings. The human body has both real and symbolic power, and this the source of a dancer’s power. A lively, skilled dancer epitomizes power and strength and discipline most ordinary people feel they lack. The power that dance has to make a strong and lasting impression upon a viewer, connects it to other sources of power within a society. The power that dance has to communicate comes from the body, as previously explained, and the body is a universally human source of strength. Dance has the power to make an impression regardless of its cultural context. The impression may not be the same in each culture, but it’s made nonetheless. Its kinesthetic energy surpasses the boundaries of race and culture, connecting individuals on a strictly human level. It is to this level that Ailey successfully raised the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, his professional dance company, and his audiences. African American art, in any form, is the combination of a variety of influences, which Ailey viewed as American culture. African American dance itself is a combination of movement and cultural influences from West African culture, Afro-Caribbean culture, and Euro-American culture. Therefore, it is not surprising that Ailey would see American culture as a mixture, since the segment he was most closely involved with clearly was one.
Alvin Ailey was born January 5, 1931. He spent the first twelve years of his life in various Texas small towns with only his mother to provide for the family since his father abandoned them when Alvin was only six moths old. Ailey grew up in the stereotypical black, impoverished south, constantly surrounded by religion.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was founded in New York City in 1958. It was the creative product of Alvin Ailey, a young African American dancer whose early childhood years were spent picking cotton, and it consisted of six additional African American dancers. While it was not the first company of its kind, it would grow to become one of America’s leading modern dance companies. Considering the times, which it began, and the fact that many young dance companies hadn’t made it beyond local performance seasons, it is amazing that the AAADT grew beyond its meager beginnings in 1958. Despite the times in which it began, the Ailey company is now a highly respected, critically-acclaimed modern dance company, which is also a popular success. Ailey’s ideas of American culture was also integral in the development of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
To speak of the popular and critical success of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater without understanding and taking into consideration the civil rights movement would be a significant oversight. Furthermore, to speak of the cultural and artistic segments of the civil rights movement without including Alvin Ailey and his dance company would be ignoring a major cultural component of the African American community. The civil rights movement – its ideals, successes, and failures – greatly affected both Ailey and the success of his dance company. Key civil rights actions during the early years of the Ailey company’s existence included the sit-in movement beginning in 1961; the freedom rides; the grass-roots voters registration drives in the rural south known commonly as freedom summer; the Albany, Georgia, movement; and the great march in Birmingham Alabama in 1963. All of the aforementioned actions became scenes of nationally televised violence. Students at sit-ins across the country were beaten for sitting at whites only lunch counters and other places were blacks weren’t allowed and freedom riders attempting to desegregate interstate bus travel were beaten upon arrival to their final destination. Because of these events, an integrated dance company glorifying southern African American culture would not be easily accepted in a society wrought with such racial tension. Ailey is remembered, and the company is known, for his works, which express the African American experience and are based upon Ailey’s memories of his childhood. Much of Ailey’s choreography was a result of his early life experiences in rural southern Texas.
Ailey’s early life experiences gave him the basis for choreographing his most popular and well known piece entitled Revelations. His inspiration for Revelations came directly from witnessing events such as baptismal ceremonies and church worship services. Revelations first premiered in 1960 and it was at this point in history in which Alvin Ailey’s goals of universalism became more easily accepted in the mainstream American culture. Revelations is a suite of spirituals in three sections entitled Pilgrim’s Sorrow, Take Me To The Water, and Move Members, Move. Spirituals, like the blues, are a distinctly African American form of music and they arose out of the black experience in America – one of servitude, resistance, and survival. Revelations transforms the feeling of spirituals and the experiences from which they arose into movement.
The first section, entitled Pilgrim’s Sorrow, included spirituals “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned”, “There is Trouble All Over This World”, “Ain’t Gonna Lay My Religion Down”, and “Fix Me Jesus”. The movement in this section is weighty to convey the sense that “the burden of the world is on your shoulders”. he opening section of Revelations. Ailey described this section as "songs that yearn for deliverance, that speak of trouble and of this world's trials and tribulations." The mood is reflected in unique gestures with heads bowed down and forward and heavy bodies reaching powerfully upward. The somber music and the lighting effects \ and brown and skin toned costuming help with this. In "I've Been Buked!!" nine dancers work in hushed accord, performing a ritual of communal introspection. In "didn't my lord deliver Daniel" , the second part of the piece, the trio of two women and one male are showing their pain they have faced through sudden pulsing of the upper torso, and contractions and releases. The "Fix Me Jesus" duet conveys the strength of faith between a woman and her minister, through a subtle unfolding of leanings, balance and leg extensions that speak of trust and conviction of belief.
The second section, entitled Take Me To The Water, recalls images from the baptismal scenes of Ailey’s childhood. In Southern Baptist churches, baptismal ceremonies were held in rivers or ponds in the vicinity of the church. All of those to be baptized wore white clothing and were marched to the baptismal site with dignity and solemnity. Singing, shouting, and dancing as expressions of praising God, followed the ceremonies. All the dancers are completely dressed in white and the movement in this section is much more spirited than that of the first sections, communicating the ecstatic nature of the baptismal experience. A large group of dancers clad in white sweep onto the stage as baptismal agents—a tree branch to sweep the earth and a white cloth to cleanse the sky—lead a processional to the stream of purification. To the strains of "Wade in the Water" a devotional leader bearing a large umbrella baptizes a young couple at a river, represented by yards of billowing blue silk stretched across the stage. The meditative solo “I Wanna Be Ready”, which communicates a devout man’s preparations for death, follows a raucous ceremony. Created by Ailey in collaborations with its original dancer James Truitte, the solo builds on exercises derived from the Horton modern dance technique.
The third section, entitled Move Members, Move, is the most energetic section of the piece. The dancers carry large yellow fans and wear Sunday-go-to-church straw hats. The movements are both large and fast, a combination, which requires an incredible amount of strength and energy. By this point in the piece, the dancers seem to be nearly in a trance, and the audience in transfixed. The section closes with the spiritual “Rocka My Soul” and at the end the audience is indeed moved, taken to another place in their lives, someplace lasting that’s touched their hearts and minds and changed their perspective. The final section celebrates the liberating power of 20th-century gospel music. This section includes the propulsive men's trio "Sinner Man" and the famous "Yellow" section, set in a southern Baptist rural church. Eighteen dancers in yellow costumes enact a church service with fans and stools. Stretched across the stage with torsos proudly lifted, the dancers embody the joy of faith contained by complex stepping patterns performed in unison. There is a spirit within Revelations that keeps it fresh every time it’s performed.
Alvin Ailey himself once described Revelations saying that, “The cultural heritage of the American Negro is one of America’s richest treasures. From his roots as a slave, the American Negro—sometimes sorrowing, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful—has created a legacy of music and dance which have touched, illuminated, and influenced the most remote preserves of world civilization. I and my dance theater celebrate, in our programme, this trembling beauty. We bring to you the exuberance of his jazz, the ecstasy, of his spirituals, and the dark rapture of his blues.”
The emotions and the experiences that produced spirituals and the blues are present within all cultures, and artists of any culture can express them, but these music and dance forms grew out of the particular experience of African Americans, but Ailey truly believed in the universalism of their emotions. As Judith Jamison poignantly states, “when we danced, no translator was needed.” The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was built upon and continues to operate on this belief. Its success is strong evidence to support the truth of Ailey’s beliefs.
The rise of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from artistic obscurity to international acclaim, and finally to acceptance in mainstream America follows the progression of the civil rights movement. When the ideals of universalism and integration which Ailey upheld were the central focus of the civil rights movement, mainstream America did not accept this integrated “black folkloric” dance company. As soon as black nationalism moved to the forefront of African American activism, the earlier movement’s goals of integration became less difficult for mainstream America to accept. It is at this same point in history that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater rose to the place where it has remained—both a critically and popularly successful American modern dance company at home and abroad. Black nationalism has still not taken hold in American society, but integration has become accepted across the country, and has even become commonplace in some sections. Fifty-five years after its founding, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues its tradition of active integration.
Critic Clive Barnes wrote in 1970 that “every performance he gives is the greatest lesson in race relations you are going to get in a month of Sundays.” He also said, “Ailey is an equal opportunity employer in a field and at a time when equal opportunity is not all that fashionable.” Barnes also said of Ailey, “He is no black apostle of apartheid, and I love him for it.” Ailey’s opposition to what was fashionable or accepted at the time also mad a distinct impression upon himself. Compared to those proclaiming black nationalism, Ailey’s message was friendly and more easily accepted by mainstream America. Ailey’s conviction about integration was in complete opposition to the values being proclaimed by many leaders of the civil rights movement in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. These activists believed in the power of strengthening the African American community above attempting to integrate. Such a powerful figure in the African American community who held beliefs opposite to those of the black nationalists, and who was achieving both fame and economic success, could not have help the black nationalist movement in a better way.
In Aristotle's book of Rhetoric, he identifies three artistic modes of persuasion, one of which was “awakening emotion (pathos) in the audience so as to induce them to make the judgment desired.” The particular piece that I chose to analyze appeals to pathos, pathos, and more pathos. The spirituals, movements, costumes, and the story behind it all allows the audience engage their emotions and feel the very emotions the dancers are portraying through the choreography. Pathos, as a form of persuasion, draws on emotions, values, beliefs, and attitudes; and that was the goal of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations.
He wanted the audience to go back to his early childhood and experience the same things he did. The Sunday morning church service, the baptismal scene, he took his audiences down to his own soul and allowed them to share and bask in those same emotions he felt as child. Being able to capture that spirit within a short period of time is absolutely amazing.
Throughout, Ailey has the dancers clearly articulate the phrases, gestures, and forms of the music. The dancers are dancing to the musical score, not alongside or against it. Ailey was able to achieve a far more substantial and cohesive expression of that music. The dancing in Revelations is both inevitable-seeming yet spontaneous; intuitive yet refined; stemming from personal impressions and experience yet broadly accessible.