Photo Pest: Edges of Ailey & Shifting Landscapes @ the Whitney

Too bad I was never interested enough in ballet to catch Alvin Ailey in "Revelations." The Whitney's tribute to the dancer/choreographer, one of the 20th century's greatest, definitely made me wish I had.

Herbert Ross lured Ailey and Carmen De Lavallade from Los Angeles to Broadway to dance in House of Flowers, a 1954 musical based on a Truman Capote story. Photographer Carl Van Vechten captured the ambitious and talented young man in a dramatic series of portraits around that time.

By 1958, Ailey had established a dance company to celebrate Black culture in America which he led for more than three decades. AIDS killed him, along with many other members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, memorialized here in an early section of the Quilt.

Studio 54 probably was the only place where our paths might have crossed. Antonio Lopez designed sexy costumes for Ailey's dancers to wear the night the club opened in 1977.

While the exhibit includes filmed and live performance, the Whitney has plumbed its collection for art that inspired Ailey, or was inspired by him. The curators really pulled out the stops, going all the way back to a Thomas Nash illustration of "Emancipation," published in an 1863 edition of Harper's Weekly, as well as commissioning some new works.

"Katherine Dunham: Revelation" by Mickalene Thomas (2024)

They've also organized the works thematically. Judith Jamison, who died the day after my visit to the Whitney, succeeded Ailey after his death in 1989. The company thrived under her leadership for more than two decades.

"Dear Mama" by Karon Davis (2024)

Carmen de Lavallade and Ailey were both born in 1931. His early dance partner, who married Geoffrey Holder, her House of Flowers cast mate, remains alive at 93, more than three decades longer than Ailey, a powerful reminder of how much life he lost.

Portrait of Carmen de Lavallade by Geoffrey Holder (1976)

Another obvious theme is the legacy of slavery.

"River" by Maren Hassinger (1972)

At the age of five, Ailey began picking cotton with his mother--who had been gang raped by four white men after his father left them--in a rural area of east Texas. In 1941, they moved to California as part of the great migration seeking a better life.

"Cabin in the Cotton" by Horace Pippin (1931-37)

"Sharecropper" by John Biggers (1945)

Lena Horne was among the African Americans he saw perform in Los Angeles before moving east, eventually joining her on the stage in the cast of another Broadway musical.

Ricardo Montalban & Lena Horne in "Jamaica" (1957)

A few years after Ailey arrived in New York, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. His timing was perfect: high culture doors had finally begun to open.