Review of Edges of Ailey Exhibition at the Whitney Museum

Written by Géraldine Ponti

A large-scale exhibition titled Edges of Ailey, exploring the life, work, and inspirations of the distinctive American choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), is currently on show at the Whitney Museum in New York. The exhibition features clips of Ailey’s dance performances projected on large screens above various works from over eighty African American artists including paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs, alongside archives such as notes, letters, drawings, and video footage of dance performances. This multidisciplinary exhibition brings together artists whose works resonate with themes Ailey encountered during his life or explored in his work, placing his explorations with dance within a broader social, political, and cultural context. The exhibition essentially serves as a visual narrative, immersing the spectator in these contexts to fully understand Ailey’s creative world.

The exhibition begins by tracing Ailey’s background and the diverse influences that shaped his work, including Southern imagery, the narratives of the African diaspora, Black culture, and spirituality, specifically Gospel traditions and Brazilian Candomblé. Ailey was born in 1931 and raised in rural Texas during the era of segregation and pervasive racism. He grew up with his single mother, Lula Cooper, who worked in the cotton fields and as a maid in white households. In 1941, they moved to Los Angeles, where Ailey began attending various theater performances, including the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, as well as African American dance productions such as Katherine Dunham’s Tropical Revue (1943). He soon began studying a broad range of dance styles at Lester Horton’s studio and joined Horton’s dance company in 1953, which deeply shaped his chorographic vision. A year later, Ailey moved to New York and performed in Broadway shows such as House of Flowers (1954) or Jamaica (1957).

Through videos and archives, the exhibition shows the works of other artists and choreographers who inspired Ailey and served as his mentors. Among them is previously mentioned Katherine Dunham, whose work is known for bridging modern dance and African diasporic tradition. The exhibit also features many other significant figures in the arts, including Geoffrey Holder, Carmen de Lavallade, his acting teacher Stella Adler, and writer James Baldwin, to name just a few.

The exhibition explores themes such as racial injustice, Black migration, and Black liberation, which profoundly marked the lives of Ailey and his contemporaries. This section features The Rest (2009-2010), a sculpture by artist Martin Puryear representing a handcart that evokes the migration of Black communities. Another example is Faith Ringgold’s United States of Attica (1971) which is a map of American violence.

Black women, Black music, and Black dance also shaped Ailey’s identity, and these themes are represented in the exhibition through the works of various artists. For example, Fly Trap (2024), a painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye commissioned for the exhibition, depicts two classical dancers.

While in New York, Ailey began assembling a group of dancers to realize his vision of dance honoring Black culture. In 1958, he founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which quickly became an important company in American modern dance. His most renowned work, Revelations (1960), which draws on African American spirituality, gospel, and blues, is one of the most performed modern dance pieces in the world. Other landmark works include Blues Suite (1958) and Cry (1971).

One might question whether the exhibition focuses too little on dance, but it intends to highlight the multidisciplinary aspects that are integral to Ailey’s work and that are inseparable from dance itself. The exhibition showcases the syncretism of the arts by uniting visual art, music, and dance. As, Ailey said in a 1984 interview recalled in an article in the New York Times: “Modern dance seemed to encapsulate all of my ideas, there was movement, there was color, there was painting, there was sculpture, and there was the putting it all together.”[1]

Additionally, if you still want to see more dance, the museum is hosting live performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and other renowned choreographers as part of the exhibition until the show closes.

[1] Cotter, H. (2024, September 26). At the Whitney, a stirring Ailey tribute moves dance to the edge. The New York Times.