Biography of Alvin Ailey

About the Artist

Perhaps the best known American choreographer in many parts of the world, Alvin Ailey helped to bridge the gap between modern dance and the general public in the United States and abroad.

Ailey moved to Los Angeles in 1942 to study with Lester Horton Dance Theatre in 1953, and after Horton's death stayed with the company as choreographer creating his earliest works in 1954: La Creation du monde, According to St. Francis, Mourning Morning and Work Dances. In 1958 Ailey formed his own company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater , of which he served as artistic director from its founding to 1980.

Under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, the company began its world travels with a 13-week tour of Australia and the Far East in 1958 and since that first tour has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Africa. From the beginning Ailey sought to reach a mass audience, blending ballet and modern dance, incorporating jazz, primitive, and contemporary forms.

He choreographed pieces for the Joffrey Ballet, the Harkness Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre for which he created The River (1970) and Sea Change (1972). Ailey performed extensively in musical comedies and dramatic shows, in films, and on television. "It is clear that, far from being a choreographer who deals only with folk materials--in this case dance and music of the American Negro--Alvin Ailey must be recognized simply as a major creative artist of our time" (Richard Kraus, History of the Dance in Art and Education