Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey was born January 5, 1931 in Roger Texas and he was a dancer and choreographer. In 1943, Ailey and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where he nurtured his interest in dance. Ailey showed an early interest in art, drawing pictures during much of his childhood. He discovered dance while on a junior high school field trip to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Eventually, he took dance classes from choreographer Katherine Dunham. But his most important influence would come from choreographer Lester Horton, who taught dance in Los Angeles. He became a member of Lester Horton's company in 1950, and when his mentor died in 1953, Ailey was chosen to take over as director and choreographer.
After training in New York City with Martha Graham and others, he founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958, which was a hugely popular, multi-racial modern dance ensemble. The company popularized modern dance around the world thanks to tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. His most famous dance, Revelations, is based on Ailey's own experience of growing up African American in the rural South and is a celebratory study of religious spirit. He retired from the stage in 1965 to devote himself to the company.
His Broadway debut came the next year in Truman Capote's House of Flowers. Staying in New York after the play closed, Ailey studied ballet, modern dance and acting. One of his teachers was choreographer Martha Graham. Over the next ten years, Ailey appeared on and off Broadway and on film as a dancer, choreographer, actor, and director. He choreographed Leonard Bernstein's Mass, which was the debut performance of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra, which was the inaugural production of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Theater. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in December 1, 1988 and died a year later of AIDS.