Edges of Ailey
Sept 25, 2024–Feb 9, 2025
Edges of Ailey, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on September 25, is the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, Texas; d. 1989, New York, New York). This dynamic showcase—described as an “extravaganza” by curator Adrienne Edwards—brings together visual art, live performance, music, a range of archival materials, and a multi-screen video installation drawn from recordings of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) repertory to explore the full range of Ailey’s personal and creative life.
Presented at the Museum in two parts, Edges of Ailey consists of an immersive exhibition in the Museum’s 18,000 square-foot fifth-floor galleries—featuring works by more than eighty artists and revelatory archival material—and an ambitious suite of performances in the Museum’s third-floor theater, including AILEY in residence for one week each month during the exhibition.
Sweeping holdings of rarely seen archives, including performance footage, recorded interviews, notebooks, letters, poems, short stories, choreographic notes, drawings, and performance programs and posters gathered from Ailey’s archives and others forge a vital throughline in the gallery. A dynamic montage of Ailey’s life and dances will play on loop across an 18-channel video installation created by filmmakers Josh Begley and Kya Lou, with curator Adrienne Edwards.
Ailey’s presence, felt through the video surround and his encased personal effects, envelops a scenic installation of artworks by over eighty artists. These works are arranged by themes that shaped Ailey’s life and dances. Sections span an expanded Black southern imaginary that enfolds histories of the American South with those of the Caribbean, Brazil, and West Africa; the enduring practices of Black spirituality; the profound conditions and effects of Black migration; the resilience for and necessity of an intersectional Black liberation; the prominence of Black women in Ailey’s life; and the robust histories and experiments of Black music; along with the myriad representations of Blackness in dance and meditations on dance after Ailey.
Artists exhibited among Ailey include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Alma Thomas, Jacob Lawrence, Rashid Johnson, Kevin Beasley, Kara Walker, and many others. A recent acquisition of Eldren Bailey and new works by Karon Davis, Jennifer Packer, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye will be presented for the first time in honor of this landmark exhibition.
Edges of Ailey also offers a rare opportunity for visitors to watch intimate live performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the Museum’s third-floor theater. As part of the exhibition’s robust live performance program, AILEY is in residence at the Whitney for one week each month, for a total of five weeks and over ninety performances. This gives visitors the opportunity to experience the full scope of Ailey’s world and legacy, including performances of classic and contemporary works by the two repertory companies—Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II—as well as showcases by students from The Ailey School, workshops and education programs from Ailey Arts In Education, and classes from Ailey Extension. During the weeks AILEY is not in residence at the Museum, a series of dance commissions by leading choreographers and their collaborators, including Trajal Harrell, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, with interdisciplinary artist Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson, Okwui Okpokwasili with Peter Born, Will Rawls, Matthew Rushing, Yusha-Marie Sorzano, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar will be showcased.
Performance tickets go on sale beginning in September. Tickets are limited and must be booked in advance. All performance ticket holders will receive access to the Edges of Ailey exhibition on the same day as their visit.
Edges of Ailey is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Joshua Lubin-Levy, Curatorial Research Associate, and CJ Salapare, Curatorial Assistant.
The lead sponsor for Edges of Ailey is the Jerome L. Greene Foundation.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater grew from a now-fabled performance in March 1958 at The 92nd Street Y in New York City. Led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African American modern dancers, that performance changed forever the perception of American dance.
The Ailey company has gone on to perform for an estimated 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents–as well as millions more through television broadcasts, film screenings, and online platforms.
In 2008, a U.S. Congressional resolution designated the Company as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world” that celebrates the uniqueness of the African American cultural experience and the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance heritage. When Mr. Ailey began creating dances, he drew upon his “blood memories” of Texas, the blues, spirituals, and gospel as inspiration, which resulted in the creation of his most popular and critically acclaimed work, Revelations. Although he created 79 ballets over his lifetime, Mr. Ailey maintained that his company was not exclusively a repository for his own work.
Today, the Company continues Mr. Ailey’s mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones. In all, more than 235 works by over 90 choreographers have been part of the Ailey company’s repertory.
