In Black America; Autobiography of Alvin Ailey

till the end. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. I think Alvin played the same role in the dance world as Jackie Robinson played in the world of professional sports. I mean, he kind of opened it up.

His company provided opportunities for dozens and dozens of dances to be in work. I mean, he was a world-class choreographer. They had a chance to travel. He opened up tremendous amount of things for them. And he opened up black choreographers whose works were not being done because they had no outlet. And by him, having this company that was open to doing their work, so they had a way where they could shoot like Tally Beatty. I mean, Alvin does Tally Beatty's work and carried it all over the world, Stackhouse, which was Tally's last piece that he did, the famous piece called Stackhouse, about the scourge of drug addiction. And it's so incredible, you know, and Tally Beatty, you know, that Alvin did Tally Beatty's work and don him a kale of these people who would not have had, because they didn't have their own companies. And most of the white companies were not going to be doing their work. And Alvin was doing it. I mean, other black dance companies were doing it also, but Alvin was, you know, because he had the highest recognition, you know, he was the one who took that work all over the

world. A. Peter Bailey, author of the book entitled, Revelations, the autobiography of Alvin Tally, published by Birch Lane Press. In 1987, Alvin Tally personally chose journalist A. Peter Bailey to help him tell his story in his own words. The interviews were conducted up until a week before his death in December of 1989 at the age of 58. Although he was committed to this book during his lifetime, some of the administrators and attorneys representing his estate were now enthusiastic about him doing an autobiography. For the years, he was very careful about guarding his private life and found it difficult to talk about his childhood, despite his unmistakable imprint on his work. Alvin Tally rolls from a childhood of extreme poverty in the segregated world of small town Texas to become a leading figure in the establishment of Marting Dance as a popular art form in this country. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, Revelations, the autobiography of Alvin Tally with author A. Peter Bailey

in Black America. That was one of his criticisms of the balance chain approach. He referred to them as cookie cutter, you know, when they kind of looked like and everything. But he said that his dances, that was a certain kind of spirit he wanted in his dances. He wanted that to come through, he wanted this kind of stoic face. He wanted them to tell a story and for this to be shown on their faces, you know, when they were dancing. So he had a whole different concept of the way dance was moved and then balance chain hat. And of course, you could see it in his work. I mean, his dances basically, his great pieces is full of hypersur, and there might be other people who consider other pieces of his because he did do some of the, I guess what you would call the abstract, you know, type dances. But his greatest works, you know, what you mean with those, what they call story ballets, like Revelations and Blue Sweet and Cry, you know, in the business they're known as story ballets. In the sense that they tell stories and to me, this was Alvin's greatest work. Born on January 5th, 1941 in Rogers, Texas, Alvin mother was 17 when he was born.

His father later abandoned them six months later. The family moved to Los Angeles to find better job opportunities. As an athletic student with a gift for foreign languages, he did backyard imitations of Gene Kelly, but did not see a live dance performance until his junior year in high school. Fascinated by what he had seen, he was persuaded by a school friend to take dance classes with a member of the Catherine Dunham Company. He later encountered the work of Lester Horton, an influential modern dance teacher and choreographer who was based in Los Angeles. Alvin A. Lee began to study with Horton in 1949 and made his debut as a dancer with the company the following year. In 1953, he took over the company after Horton's death. In 1958, he founded the Alvin A. Lee American Dance Theater, which became the most popular dance company on the international touring circuit. Recently, A. Peter Bailey, a journalist and former editor of Avenue Magazine, has written a book about the life of Alvin A. Lee.

I spoke with Mr. Bailey regarding the book and his career. The involvement in journalism really came out of my involvement with Brother Malcolm. I was one of the founding members of the Organization of African American Unity and I was the editor of the organization's newsletter and I also was a Paul Barrier at his funeral. I was in the auto model on that Sunday afternoon in February of 1961 and I basically, when people were taking out different responsibilities, nobody volunteered to do the newsletter so I said I would do it. By the time I had done absolutely no journalism, my student newspaper college or high school, but I had this, you know, I had this feel for it and so I became the editor of the newsletter we called it the Black Lash. Okay and you also was the former editor with Avenue Magazine? I was an editor of Avenue Magazine for almost nine years working out of that New York office. Okay. What was an idea of how I was working in New York City as a journalist?

Well, doing those times of course, I came on Avenue staff in 1968 which was really late 1967, November 1967. So as you can see, I was coming on at just the time when things were really breaking open. So I really was the beneficiary of all those openings that it occurred as a result of the movement and I covered the whole black theater movement, the black dance movement. Maybe the black culture movement in New York, I did a lot of writing about it for Ebony which was really bursting lucid at that time. I also covered a lot of things that were still happening down south. I covered the southeast for Ebony, they would send me down to events in the southeast. And even though, no, I was up in Pittsburgh, I did about three stories out of Pittsburgh, out of Buffalo. So I came on board in November 1967 which is just about the time when you were beginning to see some concrete results of the movement, especially in opening up and Avenue started

getting invitations to things that there are many people that have not been invited to before. It just will happen now was the person, you know, so I was able to get into a lot of things and participate in a lot of things and that Ebony entered prior to me had not been able to, you know, had not been invited to. This new book in which you have written the autobiography of Alvin Elley and you collaborated with Mr. Elley on that. How did you happen to meet Mr. Elley in the first place and then be asked to write his autobiography? Well, well, one of them, of course, as I was saying, I was there at the development of the whole black culture movement that came out of the 1960s. And of course, Alvin's company was one of the major expressions of that energy. I mean, the Urban Alien American dance theater which was founded in 1958, but which really kind of burst into its own from about the mid-50s on. And as a result, this was one of those organizations that I was writing about, you know, and

you know, in New York. Now, that's how I first met Alvin. I met him in 1968 when the black students on the white college campuses began to organize for the first time. This was like, I think, in the fall and winter of 1968. And they were having the first black weekend up in Dartmouth College. And Laurent Bennett, Jr., who worked out at the Chicago office, was doing an article on this new phenomena of the black students organizing on the white college campuses. And they sent me up to Dartmouth to cover this black weekend. And one of the companies that was performing at this black weekend was the Alvin Alien American dance theater. That's when I met Alvin Alien for the first time. And then over the years, I wrote about him a couple of times for Ebony, and I didn't article him later for Black Enterprise, and didn't article in essence. I was the associate director and editor of the news editor for the black theater reliance, which was an umbrella organization of black theater and dance companies. And his company was a member of that, and so I was connected with him doing that.

So we kind of had a, that's how we knew each other mainly, as he was from a professional perspective. I was not a good friend of him, and then I moved out of New York in August of 1986, and in the late fall of 1987, I think, of the winter of 1987, I was back up in New York on some business, and just ran into him on the streets. And we started talking, and he mentioned to me that he was considering doing his autobiography. And of course, I encouraged him because coming out of the Malcolm X Wing of the movie, where we were always taught the importance of information and documenting, I said, you know, it's very important that you document what you've done, so I'm glad to hear that. And we talked on and on, and finally, I assumed that he had already chosen a writer, you know, one of the dance writers out of New York, and I asked him who was going to be working with him on the project, and he said, well, I haven't decided yet. And that's when I put it in the bid, that's when I would like to be considered. And, you know, he acted, I think I could do it out of Richmond, with me living in Richmond. I said, oh, yeah, we only six hours away by train, and, you know, that's all the modern

communications and everything. So he told me, you know, he was going to think about it, told me to send in some stuff, which I did. And about a month later, I got a call from his office saying that he had asked me, selected me to work with him on his autobiography. You know, I've been out there for a long time, and working with Ebene, you get a chance to interview a lot of so-called celebrity, you know, so you kind of get used to dealing with celebrities. And so I wasn't, you know, despite what the Washington Post critics said, is that I, sometimes it looked as though I sat there and all, as he said, I mean, I was not supposed to sit there at all, but I was certainly not going to sit there and argue with him, but the television is interpretation of his life, and his choreography, you know, and what I read those reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post, I have to get him to understand why he probably didn't pick one of those New York City dance writers to work with him, because they would have been trying to tell him what to say about his own life, you know, rather than letting him say what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it, you know.

And I basically think, believe that I allowed him, you know, that's what happened in, you know, in revelations. I tried to keep myself out of it, and this is Alvin talking, this is what he wanted to be talking about. And of course, we did not get through everybody who reads the book tells me, boy, I wanted to know more. I said, well, so did I. But, you know, and I say in the introduction that we did not get through, but I do feel that we got enough, especially about that early part of his life, you know, the childhood, the family and all the... Yeah, I wanted you to go into that. He was born in 1931, and little did we know, a little did I know until I read the information in Rodgers, Texas. Texas. And that had a profound effect on his whole life. Yeah, I mean, all those little... He grew up in the... And because his mother had to move around to work, you know, he was living in a lot of little small Texas towns, which he described beautifully in the book. Right.

You know, what it was like moving from place to place, but he said the one constant in all those places was there wherever they were on a Sunday morning, they went to church. And that's where he began to hear that music. And of course, that music didn't lead to revelations, you know, later in life, which is his signature piece. And also, growing up in those Texas towns, it led to Blue Sweet, which is another one of his great, great pieces of a great, great malaise. And also, they led to, you know, they, plus the years in California, led to Cry, which is another one of his masterpieces. So I mean, you... One of the things you do when you read the book is that when you then go to see his company perform, and you see those dances that he talks about, you have an even deeper appreciation of them, because you will know where they came from. They came, you know, out of his childhood. The other love that he had besides dancing was the love of language. Yes. He was a great storyteller. He was a great storyteller. He spoke about four or five languages.

He seemed to have, you know, seemed to have been a knack that he had for picking up languages. And he loved black music, man. I mean, he was... When I was talking to him, you know, for the book, he was most animated when he talked about black music. And he said that one of his desires was to do, like, revelations deals with gospel and spiritual music. Right. Sweet deals with the blues. He didn't want to do a jazz piece and then a rap piece. And then one day, he wanted to have a whole evening of dance that would, you know, there would be around these various aspects of black music. Of course, he did not complete that. But you... I mean, can you imagine what it would have been? Right. And he'd been able to complete that, you know, it was kind of blowing. Also understand that he was committed to do this book during his lifetime, but others were not as committed or committed at all. Well, you know, he never gave me any names, but he did tell me on more than one occasion that there were people around him.

That's where he put it, who did not want him to do an autobiography. And I think they were kind of nervous about what he would say, you know, and what he was going to say, because, you know, they considered him as, you know, they were a little bit nervous about, you know, I mean, he had been, you know, had this breakdown and had been, you know, institutionalized for a few months, you know, so they were a little bit nervous about what he was going to be saying in this book, you know, and so they tried to... They wanted a scholarly biography, but Alvin wanted to do an autobiography and revelations as, you know, as a result of that desire. You had an opportunity to speak with his colleagues and friends almost on the behest of of Alvin himself. Yeah, these were the people who I talked to in the book are people who, who he directed me to. Okay.

You know, and sometimes I told him, I had to tell him every now and then, you know, these people cannot tell your story now, you got to tell your story. Right. I think sometimes he was trying to dodge talking things himself, but they can't supplement things, you know, but of course, after he died, then I ended up using them the way that I did. If he had not died, we had been able to complete the book before he died, then those people would not be in the book the way they are, or some of their observations might have been included in an introduction, you know, or something like that, but they would not have the, you know, the, the, the separateness that it does, you know, in the book now. But I'm glad I did that. I'm glad, and I'm glad that, you know, that I was, that I talked to those people because they do provide, you know, some further insights into him. Alvin didn't get an opportunity to know his father well, but obviously it was, it was a burden that he, he carried along with the other burdens, and he couldn't, could you get a feeling why he couldn't directly go to his mother and ask her some of, some of the pressing concerns and questions that he had?

Yeah, well, you know, I know, I think it was just that he, with the father thing was just, was just a very, very, very, I didn't even know this, of course, until I started dealing with him. You know, on the, on the project, how deeply disaffected him. I mean, you know, I remember telling him about, it was one time I was, we could talk it. I was talking about my father, you know, who was, who was now 85, and he was about 80 at that time, and I was telling him that he was, I think I was telling him that he was getting that to celebrate his 80th birthday. And he was just, you know, he just, he was just amazing, you know, me talking about, you know, having him, you know, my father all these years, you know what I mean? Right. And of course, he spoke to his father, you know, one time in his entire life, about a 10 to 15 minute telephone conversation. And he was Alvin L. Jr., which makes it even worse, you know, because you know, there's a senior right there and you share the name. And so that, that, that's later, that had a very, very profound effect on, you know, on his life.

And, and, and his mother, you know, he was close to his mother, but he has sent him the book, you know, there were times he would get very angry with her because he didn't understand when he was young, why she was away so much, you know, because she had to go and work, you know, and he had to, you know, he stayed with, with relatives, you know, aunts and cousins and this kind of thing, you know. And then when they finally found someone who, who he came to regard as a father, she then left and decided to leave Texas and go to California to get work, you know, in the, in the, in the airplane industry, you know, doing World War II. And so it took him away from this man who, who had been the first person that he had ever really looked upon as a father. And so that bothered him a lot, you know, so they, you know, there were all kinds of these little things, you know, that went back and forth, you know, in that relationship. Could you tell us how Catherine Graham and Lester Horton inspired Alvin, you mean Catherine Dunham? Catherine Dunham, excuse me. Okay. Well, you know, Catherine Dunham's company, if you read in the book, his, his, his description

of, of, of, of how he felt when he saw the company for the first time. I mean, he just, it's one of the, to me, it's one of the, one of the, the memorable passages in the book because, you know, he, he had just never seen anything like it. I mean, in the way he described how it affected, he was 15 years old, you know, it's very memorable in the book. And it was that sense that she made him realize that there was such thing as, as concertant and black concert dancers, you know, he talks about that in the book. And of course, later on, and probably, I think, the year before he died, he did a, a, a, her work. He, he revived some of her works that no one had done for a long time. You know, out of his, you know, I guess kind of the payback those early for what he did for him in terms of, of making dance, you know, real to it. And then of course, Lester Horton was the one who, who was his first teacher and who actually talked to him, a reluctant Alvin, you know, to dealing with dance, after he was bought to Lester by, by comment Lavelard, who was, was his great friend, you know, in his life.

So these two people played a very, very tremendous influence, you know, over, over his, his later work and his whole ideas and concepts of what dance, you know, could do. And he wanted, he said to me that he felt it so Lester Horton, because back in the 40s and 50s, Lester Horton, you know, had a, had a company that had Japanese dance, you know, Asian American dances, African American dances, European American dances. I mean, the time when this was almost a herd of, you know, anywhere, and especially on the East Coast where the dance establishment was. So he thought there's a, because of this, that Lester Horton does not give his profit due, you know, from the, you know, from the dance world. And so he wanted to make sure he used his, his autobiography to give him some credit and that's why there's a whole chapter. Alvin had a problem with the established dance companies of his day, of being too commercial. And he wanted to, wanted to, to present an art form that wasn't black, that wasn't

white. It was just a basic art form, but the frustrations in which it was never ending. Making sources, et cetera, et cetera. No, he, he, it wasn't that he, he had, he, he, he made, he talked about, you know, where Balanchine was, you know, George Balanchine, the New York City Ballet for many, many years. I mean, he was considered like, but, you know, God of American, you know, dance. And of all dance, even though he was, he was in ballet, but, you know, he, everybody kind of looked at him for guidance and Alvin says in his book that he kind of filled his room, but Balanchine's work was very cold and unfeeling, and, and with some of the other dances, he felt, he felt, he felt as though they did not do other people's choreography. You know, one of the things that made Alvin's company unique and great was that he didn't even just do his own choreography. He did the choreography of a whole bunch of other people. He helped to keep their works alive. And he felt as though other, you know, too many other modern dance companies, they only danced the choreography of the, you know, of their artistic director and founder, you know,

and so that, you know, he, that was his criticism of them. But he, it wasn't that he considered them to commercial, it was that sometimes some of the funding sources considered Alvin's company as being too commercial. You know, they equate popularity with being commercial. Okay. You know, that kind of a leak is added to, if too many people like you, you must not be doing something like you must be doing something that's a little bit, you know, if, if, you know, you know, that's not a, you just attitude. And there was a time when we were hearing rumors that the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts were talking about, you know, cutting it back as his funding because his company had gotten too, quote, commercial, unquote. What all they meant was that the company was popular. And this was a strong rumor in the black culture role in New York in the, I think it was the late 70s or early 80s, you know, I remember, I was at the black theater last year and we were all, we had meetings around how we were going to count, you know, count or attack, you know, this kind of thing, you know.

But I think what it was was something, I personally think somebody was just envy that, that probably the most popular dance company, modern dance company in the country was the Alvin and the American dance theater. Did Alvin have any enemies or those who may have tried to sabotage his career in company? Well, I mean, you know, he never said to me, I didn't find anybody as such. He may have had some more to say about this, you know, we've been able to finish the book. But he never said as such, but, you know, I mean, there was a lot of, that was envy and jealousy, you know, and resentment, you know, that this company, you know, this is a black dance company, you know, we still live in America, you know, that they were getting all of this acclaimed and that there were some people, you know, who just did not like this. And of course, they were two, I mean, they were not, you know, they didn't consider themselves as very sophisticated people. So when they do that little dirt, they're going to do it very quietly and you're going to have a hard time, you know, tracing it back to them, you know what I mean, I mean,

you probably can do it if you were the real, and I'm sure Alvin probably would have had something to say deeper about this, we've been able to, you know, have we finished, you know, finished the book. But, you know, this, I mean, that New York City man, art world in general, I mean, that he was talking on any racial day, but just in general, man, you know, that New York City art world is barracudas. Oh, great. Who were some of the legendary artists of his day and of this day, as we speak, that Alvin collaborated with and wrote choreography for? Okay, well, he talks about people like Pearl Bailey with whom he performed in his first musical. A lot of people don't know that Alvin had a theater career when he came in, he came in the theater to dance on Broadway. And he remembers Pearl Bailey when he danced with in House of Flowers. And then Jamaica, which he danced with Lena Horne, and developed a lifelong relationship with.

And he worked with Lee and Teen Price when she opened the New Metropolitan Opera with, I think it was, was it Aida? I think it was Aida, I'm not sure. But whatever opera they did, you know, he did the choreography for that. I mean, he did, he worked with Harry Belafonte, you know, he worked with Talley Beatty. He did a lot of, he choreographed, did a lot of Talley Beatty's choreography. He lived for a while with Author Mitchell, the founder, the dance theater of Harlem, you know, and, I mean, these people on this level, you know, Diane Carroll, he was with her in a play called Tiger, Tiger Birding Bright, you know. I mean, you know, he was, he was, he worked with people who, some of whom were already established like the horns and the Bailey's and those kind of folks. And some of whom like him, well, his peers, you know, like Diane Carroll and Sissley Tyson, you know, and those kind of folks that he worked with. And he talked about that in the book, he's a chapter called Giants, in which he, you

know, talks about, you know, it has Duke Ellington, you know, he has a very interesting and, you know, anecdotes and funny stories that tell about, you know, working with these people. And what they were like, some of those things, some of the ways they, I mean, he was a special person with the women. I mean, he was, he was teller, you know, he was for say in the book, he talks about how, you know, how women like Pearl Bailey and Lena Horne and Claudia McNeil and Lee and T. Priorities to these women knew what they wanted, man, and Catherine Dunham and they didn't play. You know, and, and because they came over the time when they had to know everything about what they were doing, you know, they had to know the music, the staging, the scenery, you know, they, they knew everything about putting productions on and he was used to, he just amazed. I mean, he was, you know, he was, you know, he was able to do some of the things he did because he had watched these ladies in action and how they, you know, how they took control and made sure that everything was right. And they had a, they had the attitude, you know, he said, one time, Catherine Dunham

won't defy her whole orchestra because they were, she could hear, hear them being, mostly be creaming here that they were off, but she could. And she felt that they were off because they simply would not rehearse before they got started, you know. Okay. But those kind of little things, I mean, he had some funny anecdotes about Lee and Teen Price, you know, and, and, and, and Pearl Bailey and how she was, she didn't like this one director when they were doing House of Flower. She didn't like this director, for some reason they, the, the supposedly obviously he had made some kind of, what they considered to be a racist statement. And so she didn't like the director, so she went to get rid of him, so every time he would come into theater, she would think. Are there, are there any questions still left in your mind unanswered concerning Alvin Haley? Oh, oh, yeah. I, I, I mean, I would like to, I would like to know more about this whole relationship with, you know, with the dance, with the dance establishment in New York. Okay.

I would like, I really would like to explore that further, you know, because, you know, that, to talk about the politics of dance, you know, that, I mean, that, I mean, that there's, there's, there's, there's some on that in the book on that, but I would like to have, to see Alvin get into that, you know, much more, and we would have got into it much more, you know, had we had, you know, the time. A. Peter Bailey, author of the book, Revelations, the autobiography of Alvin Haley, published by Birch Lane Press. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked the future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Students and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John El Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us this week. And please join us again next time. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712.

That's in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John El Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America. But when Alvin was alive, we had a publisher. I mean, it was not easy to get in one day, but we did have a publisher. But for some reason that publisher pulled out when he died and it took me over four years to get another publisher. Revelations of the autobiography of Alvin Ailey with author A.P.

to Bailey this week on in Black America.