Making Space for Black Modern Dance

The works of Alvin Ailey have been largely overlooked by musicologists interested in studying the intersections between music and dance. This is true despite his overrepresentation in dance scholarship in large part because of the sustained popularity of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). Even though he was not a musician, Ailey was an enthusiastic listener of music with eclectic tastes and a sensitivity to musical structure and phrasing that make his works a rich site for musicological study. The dissertation makes a case for a deeper study into Ailey's interactions with music, composers, and musicians using the three major goals that Ailey had for his company: to carve out a space for Black performance art; to provide job opportunities for Black artists; and to promote the work of Black artists. Three case studies, his ballets Revelations, The River, and Mary Lou's Mass represent the manifestation of each of these goals in different ways. Revelations places African-American spirituals into their cultural context and reveals the blend of Africanist and Western European elements that form an African-American aesthetic. Ailey and Duke Ellington's collaboration on The River for the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) reveals the systemic racist structures that were and continue to be in place to exclude and discourage Black performers from participating in Western classical performance. Mary Lou's Mass was a collaboration with jazz pianist and composer, Mary Lou Williams. Ailey intended to create an artistically fulfilling representation of the Catholic Mass and demonstrate the appropriateness of jazz music in the liturgy. Analyzing these three ballets highlights both Ailey's preferred methods of musical collaboration and the strategies Black artists from across disciplines used to cope with institutional racism especially as it was practiced in areas considered high art.