Butler's Cinema Scene

“AILEY” My rating: B (Available through mulitple streaming services)
82 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Ailey” opens with the 1988 Kennedy Center awards ceremony at which  choreographer Alvin Ailey was  honored for his contribution to American arts.  Actress Cicely Tyson praises Ailey — who would die only a year later — for developing what she calls “choreography of the heart.”  

That’s a terrific description of Ailey’s work.  And in fact the high points of Jamila Wignot’s documentary are the many performance snippets of Ailey’s brilliant creations, especially the life-changing “Revelations,” a distillation of his African American childhood and cultural influences capable of reducing the viewer to tears with a simple but absolutely perfect gesture.

Those moments of physical revelation are key to this doc because, truth be told, Alvin Ailey is knowable almost exclusively through his dance. The man himself kept his cards close to the vest.

The film employs creative editing of old footage to evoke Ailey’s childhood — born to a single mother in Depression-era Texas — and his subsequent adolescence in Los Angeles where he was exposed to the ballet and became a huge fan.  Later he became a dancer, working in New York before founding his American Dance Theatre and becoming a major force in the ballet world.

The Ailey legacy looms large.  As a child he could not conceived of a black professional dancer, and his creation of magnificent black-themed ballets was revolutionary.  At the same time, he insisted that his company be integrated.  Talent, in Ailey’s eyes, was color blind.

But the man himself?  Well, even people who worked with him for years — among them famed dancer Judith Jamison and fellow choreographer Bill T. Jones — had trouble getting a handle on his personality. 

His private life was secretive — one longtime colleague reports that  in all their years together he was invited to Ailey’s home only once — and when he was dying of AIDS in 1989  the still-closeted Ailey took pains that his doctor report his cause of death as cancer.  He didn’t want his mother to know her boy was queer.

“Ailey” has plenty of soundbites of its subject talking, and his insights into his process are revealing. At one point he speaks of “beautiful things inside me that I’ve always tried to get out.”

Face it…only an artistic genius could have pulled off Ailey’s achievements.  But the person behind the genius?  Hidden.

About the closest he gets to exploring his personal life is his statement that a dancer lives with physical pain, little pay, and that thanks to the economic need to tour half the year the career is “disastrous on personal relations.”

Director Wignot alternates Ailey’s story with the efforts of his company to create and stage a 60th anniversary ballet that would reflect the major influences of Ailey’s life and art.  It’s an interesting idea— contrast the man’s experience with the efforts of colleagues to create a work worthy of that experience — but it never pays off.  We get some intriguing rehearsal footage, but never get a significant view of the finished piece.

| Robert W. Butler