You can probably tell that I think Ailey is an exceptional documentary. I do, and I think the film is also a poem and tribute to an artist we must treasure.
Frankly, until I saw Jamila Wignot鈥檚 documentary Ailey, about the dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey, I didn鈥檛 give much of a hoot about dance. It follows that I also knew nothing about dance, and still know little. But Ailey鈥檚 work just knocked my socks off. And so did the film itself.
Most of all, the film is a work of great beauty. The dance sequences are simply magnificent, but the images that accompany Ailey鈥檚 conversation and the interviews with dancers and choreographers make the talk thrilling. Archival footage of Ailey as a child, of rural Black people coming and going from church. Individual portraits of people from the world where Ailey grew up are haunting and gorgeous, and they do what Ailey did with dance 鈥� they make the lives of Black people solid and valuable. They make the Black experience fundamental to all human life.
Alvin Ailey was born in small-town Texas in 1931, and he died from complications of AIDS right in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in 1989. But in his 58 years, he built the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company and a body of dance works that, as they should, reach to what鈥檚 essential in all our lives.
Ailey doesn鈥檛 replicate moments from his experience. He does what great artists do 鈥� he transforms the actual into figures of art. It鈥檚 more than making things he remembers abstract. He distills experience. His famous dance 鈥淩evelation鈥� comes from childhood memories, when he went to church with his mother, but the dancers onstage reach into something like ecstasy. Imitating ideas or feelings about the social world, no matter how accurate or observant don鈥檛 make art; they make lectures. Ailey鈥檚 dances brought into the world the fact and the particulars of Black American experience. You can鈥檛 forget or ignore that Fred Hampton was murdered, or that Black people were slaves in cotton fields.
But that鈥檚 only the start of his art. Those gestures from field work also evoke repetition and bondage in ways anyone can understand and feel. The movements in 鈥淩evelation鈥� have the sense of liberating exaltation that you get from Gothic cathedrals. And like those cathedrals, Ailey鈥檚 choreography is also grounded and basic. I find it amazing how deft the dancers鈥� motions are. They鈥檙e clear and profound; there鈥檚 not a lot of doubt, and I see no tricky or self-serving self-consciousness. Ailey鈥檚 choreography radiates simultaneous pain and triumph over pain.
In another piece, male dancers stand on their toes with their heads hanging in the postures of men who鈥檝e been lynched 鈥� we鈥檝e all seen those dreadful photos. It鈥檚 dangerous to try to make horror beautiful. It risks making the event into cocktail party conversation. And these dance images do beautify, but in a way that claws at you with what is inescapable.
The film respects Ailey鈥檚 clarity and depth. Lots of films about artists make facile one-to-one correspondences between the artist鈥檚 life and work. The movie 鈥淎iley鈥� understands the transformation of biography into art.
