Going back to his roots

Alvin Ailey wasn't just a great dancer and choreographer, he was a great man. On the eve of his company's visit to London, John Percival explains how Ailey's amazing career brought black culture into the mainstream of American dance

Many lives would have been less joyful if Alvin Ailey had not been persuaded, as a teenager, to watch the dance classes that his schoolfriend Carmen de Lavallade attended in Hollywood, a bus ride from their Los Angeles homes. Ailey was in awe of her dancing ever since a solo she gave at school assembly; she in turn admired him as a gymnast, but it took a while to convince him that he, too, could dance.

Ailey had jived around in imitation of Gene Kelly and other film stars, but in spite of that and the superb male dancing he had seen when Katherine Dunham's Afro-Caribbean company came to his local theatre, Ailey had the firm idea that for a man to be a professional dancer was sissy. There was also the belief (only too true then) that openings for black people in dance were few. How could he know that his amazing career was going to change both those circumstances?

Years had to pass before the first performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, but his roots were firmly planted by that early experience, under de Lavallade's influence, with Lester Horton's school and company. Horton's approach was unique. He devised extraordinary movements but was more interested in the meaning they could convey. He was influenced by Native American dances, and at a time when segregation was rife he happily mixed white, black and Japanese dancers. He made his pupils join in all aspects of production – buying costume materials, making them up, painting scenery and doing the lights. Above all, he radiated an enthusiasm that drew Ailey back into dance when he had almost decided to become a language teacher.

Then, just when things might have taken off for his impoverished company, Horton suddenly died. To meet a further booking, their manager called for volunteers from the dancers to make new ballets; Ailey (not quite 22) was the only one who spoke up. But two things happened to prevent a smooth transition. First, Ailey's two creations were badly received. Second, the producer of a new musical, Truman Capote's House of Flowers, having seen Ailey and De Lavallade audition for a television spot, begged them to join the show as featured dancers. The sensuous duet made for them by Herbert Ross, and a spectacular solo for Ailey, brought Broadway success – and completely sidetracked Ailey for five years into other musicals, plays (as a straight actor) and teaching.

It wasn't wasted time. He took lessons from the leading modern dance teachers, and in ballet and acting. He got to know other black dancers and to become known by them. He worked with Lena Horne and met Duke Ellington – their attendance at the first programmes of his own company was a great boost. He plucked up courage to put on his first show and spent seven months preparing it with a volunteer cast, using their spare time from other work in whatever dingy rehearsal space he could find and afford.

Now some happy instinct, or perhaps plain common sense, took Ailey right back to his childhood for subject matter. He never knew his father, and was brought up by his mother in Texas before they moved to Los Angeles during the Second World War. It wasn't an easy life – at five he helped her earn money picking cotton – and Texas then was a place of strict segregation, with lynchings and other attacks (he knew, although not from her, that his mother was raped on her way home one night). But there were good memories too: among them, church on Sunday and a lively time at the Dew Drop Inn on Saturday night. He was too young to do more than watch the latter from the windows or doorway, but it inspired him in creating his first big ballet, Blues Suite.

His programme note proudly affirmed that the blues "sprang from the very souls of their creators" and claimed that "the musical heritage of the southern Negro remains a profound influence on the music of the world". But his serious purpose was set in a "barrel house" and showed its clientele about their flirtatious, quarrelsome, bawdy, dark or joyful activities. And he gave every one in the cast a real character to play. One of his later dancers, Dudley Williams, said: "He didn't want you to just come out there and do the steps. He wanted a reason behind it." And that's what he always got. The ballet brought the house down.

By sharing the show and the rent with another new choreographer, Ailey had managed to book the best of New York's small dance theatres, the "92nd Street Y", so he got reviews too, and favourable ones. Concerts about once a year were the norm; Ailey's second, with a partly revised programme, sold out, and his third got such a response that the hall's manager could halt the ovation only by announcing a repeat performance four weeks later.

The new ballet causing this excitement was Revelations, which has remained so much in demand ever since that even when Ailey wanted to rest the production, audiences would not let him. Again he revisited his childhood, this time remembering church services and baptisms, the struggle between sin and repentance, the sheer exhilaration of believing in salvation, all performed to a wonderful score of spirituals and gospel songs. Both Revelations and Blues Suite were revised ("I'm accustomed to changing things around until I get them right", Ailey wrote in his autobiography), but after only three performances he had the foundation of a continuing repertory for worldwide performances.

The nature of the company was defined by the name it soon took: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey was torn two ways: he wanted to show black culture and make work for black dancers, but he was opposed to segregation, and somehow his great humanity enabled him to reconcile the two purposes. There were always white, Japanese or Hispanic dancers as well as black; his criterion for recruiting was that they must have a distinctive way of moving. He also insisted that he did not want the company only as a repository of his own works, and in fact provided not much more than one-third of the premieres himself, while inviting many other choreographers, 54 in all, many black (who got few chances elsewhere) but by no means all.

Ailey's childhood experiences left him with a lasting self-doubt. He said: "I felt that no matter what I did, what ballet I made, how beautifully I danced, it was not good enough." Ultimately this insecurity contributed to a breakdown and his early death in 1989 at only 58. But he was a great dancer: big, beautifully built, powerful as a lion. He created some great ballets. He was a great director: the people who now run his company all worked with him and their aim is quite simply to maintain what he started. And he was a great man, whose goodwill, energy and devotion to a cause inspired love in those who knew him. Judith Jamison, who became director after him, spoke for all when she said at his funeral: "He made us believe we could fly."

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater bring two mixed programmes (both featuring 'Revelations') to Sadler's Wells London EC1 (0207-863 8000), 24-29 June