There was a vast family gathering at New York City Center on Wednesday December 11, and it felt like a warm embrace encompassed everyone in the theater. While there were no blood relatives of Judith Jamison speaking from the stage at this superbly and lovingly produced tribute, the Alvin Ailey family was out in full force.
Present were multiple generations of Ailey dancers — from Jamison’s colleagues during the company’s pioneering 1960s years as a small troupe hitting the road to the 32 current members of the company — as were many choreographers whose work has been performed by Ailey, along with eminent dance world luminaries.
Titled Dancing Spirit: A Celebration of Life, the 90-minute event was magnificently conceived and produced, delivering a very complete sense of Jamison’s multifaceted talents, uniquely rich and distinctive persona, and far-reaching influence.
As a dancer, she more than justified Alvin Ailey’s invitation into his fledgling company in 1965. She soon became a leading stage presence and a great inspiration to him. By 1971, when he created the now-legendary solo Cry for Jamison, her impact was far-reaching and celebrated.
After 15 years with AAADT, she achieved Broadway success in 1981’s memorable Sophisticated Ladies (co-starring with Gregory Hines), guest appearances (she created a role for John Neumeier, who was present at the tribute) and launched her own choreographic career and company, the Jamison Project.
But she returned to the Ailey fold, for good, when Alvin Ailey became ill in 1989 and asked her to take over as artistic director. She guided the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to new levels of recognition and achievement, getting its budget out of the red and into the black within a few years.
From there, Jamison never looked back; she expanded the company’s repertory in new directions while never letting Ailey’s enduring works lose their impact and relevance. When she decided that the expansive, multi-faceted Ailey organization needed its own home, she made a building happen. The 2005 opening of the Joan Weill Center for Dance was cited often as an enduring aspect of Jamison’s impact on the organization. Retiring as artistic director in 2011, she remained Artistic Director Emerita and was an ongoing presence around the company and at performances.
Whether intentional or not, Wednesday’s line-up of speakers was all female, and each conveyed a strong personal connection to Jamison from a distinctive era and vantage point. Following a heartfelt welcome by Board Chair Daria Wallach, Sylvia Waters recalled sharing the stage with Jamison in the then small, nomadic, financially vulnerable company. Waters shared how Jamison waited her return from the hosptial with a bottle of champagne upon the birth of her newborn son, and conveyed an enduring closeness as friends and colleagues as Waters, the longtime artistic director of Ailey II, went on to nurture many generations of Ailey dancers.
Anna Deavere Smith vividly and warmly recalled how she first connected with Jamison – a figure who inspired awe – and went on to collaborate with her on the 1993 full-company work Hymn, an epic tribute to Ailey himself for which Smith distilled and delivered text drawn from interviews with the entire company roster, Jamison herself, and longtime associate artistic director Masazumi Chaya. The presence of a large contingent of the 1990s Ailey generation made itself felt when a dynamic excerpt from the 1998 PBS broadcast of Hymn was shown: a fierce chorus chimed in from he audience as Smith declaimed Jamison’s exhortation “Go to the wall!” and “If you can’t go any further than you’ve been yesterday, then what’s the point? And what are you waiting for?”
Jamison’s (and Ailey’s) strong connection to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was reflected by Harolyn Blackwell’s performance of “A Simple Song” from Leonard Bernstein’s 1971 Mass, which was choreographed by Ailey and which inaugurated the new arts center, with Jamison (and Waters) in the cast. Shortly before, we saw the complete Jamison segment from the 1999 Kennedy Center Honors broadcast – a truly jubilant moment of celebration.
Additional speakers included fond recollections from Ailey Board Chair Emerita, Reverend Eboni Marshall Turman, Donna Wood Sanders. the memorable, regal Ailey dancer who inherited many Jamison roles and spearheaded a new generation. Actress Phylicia Rashad was luminous reading Maya Angelou’s text “Phenomenal Woman” which she ultimately addressed to the large iconic Jamison photo on the screen above the stage.
The sole excerpt of Jamison’s choreography that was performed on stage was the memorably poignant solo, “If It’s Magic,” from the 2004 Love Stories. It was performed with singular eloquence and unaffected purity by Clifton Brown, who has moved on from his long tenure as a leading company dancer but remains working with the company.
Ailey’s Revelations was of course part of the tribute, in video excerpts with Jamison holding her iconic umbrella, and in an onstage performance of the central section danced by members of Ailey II (“Processional/Honor, Honor”) alongside soloists from the main company in “Wade in the Water.”
The afternoon’s closing performance was the final section of Cry danced by Constance Stamatiou, with a fervent contingent of young students from the Ailey School following her across the stage in the exuberant last diagonal.
Susan Reiter covers dance for TDF Stages and contributes regularly to the Los Angeles Times, Playbill, Dance Australia and other publications.