I had the good fortune to first work with the Alvin Ailey company as an 18 year old scholarship student at Jacob\u2019s Pillow.\u00a0 I was very taken with his work, it could reach people in visceral ways.\u00a0 Alvin\u2019s dancing was spectacular, sensual, almost animal -like.\u00a0 The Ailey company returned many times to the Pillow in the 5 years that I was there.\u00a0 Among the company members then were legendary dancers like Carmen de Lavallade, Thelma Hill, and Minnie Marshall.\u00a0 By the second year, I became the official Stage Manager at Jacob\u2019s Pillow.<\/p>\n
Some years later, in 1968, I toured with the Ailey company as a stage manager, along with lighting designer Nicola Cernovitch, who was my mentor.\u00a0 This was a grueling bus tour, full of one night stand performances, for four months between January 12\u00a0 and April 5 of that year.<\/p>\n
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre 1968 USA Tour dancers were James Truitte, Judith Jamison, Consuelo Atlas, George Faison, Michele Murray, Sharon Miller, Kelvin Rotardier, Lynne Taylor, Michael Peters, and Elbert Morris.\u00a0 Repertory included Talley Beatty\u2019s \u201cCongo Tango Palace,\u201d and \u201cToccata,\u201d Alvin Ailey\u2019s \u201cReflections in D,\u201d \u201cBlues Suite,\u201d and \u201cRevelations,\u201d Geoffrey Holder\u2018s \u201cProdigal Prince,\u201d as well as Lester Horton\u2019s \u201cThe Beloved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alvin wasn\u2019t touring with us then. What could a choreographer do with one night stand shows but just witness them?\u00a0 This tour was about survival.\u00a0 Nicola Cernovitch was on tour through UCLA, then I was on my own.\u00a0 Suddenly I was doing lighting and stage managing.\u00a0 I started to hate the sound of that bus revving up outside of the hotel.\u00a0 You started to feel that you were a performance animal in a cage, only let out to perform, then thrown back in the cage\/bus.\u00a0 When Nick left, I lost my voice for a while.\u00a0 I was mostly gesturing the time calls (half-hour, 15 min, 5 min\u2026) to the company.\u00a0 I was trying to save my voice to call performance cues.\u00a0 At some point we dipped into the South.\u00a0 It was my first real experience with civil rights.\u00a0 This was a black company in the 60\u2019s and sometimes we were accused of being freedom riders.\u00a0 Menus were thrown at us in restaurants, etc.\u00a0 I once asked the company to come to the theater as late as possible because the stage hands were biased rednecks, so I figured the less time we all spent together, the better.\u00a0 The opposite of this was when we played at a theater venue that doubled as a Negro cooking school.\u00a0 The black stagehands came to work in their Sunday best suits as if they were going to church.\u00a0 They were polite and attentive.\u00a0 The culmination of that tour was at Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, which was a black college.\u00a0 It was the same day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.\u00a0 It was a quiet and sad bus ride back to New York.\u00a0 We arrived to riot-torn streets.\u00a0 The next day we had to do two performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.\u00a0 Exhausted, I decided that wasn’t\u00a0 for me.\u00a0 I recommended Bill Hammond to replace me.\u00a0 Later, he became the General Manager for the company.<\/p>\n
A week after, I was on tour with Glen Tetley\u2019s company,\u00a0 another month and a half of touring by station wagon.\u00a0 Later that same year I toured with Merce Cunningham. The year 1968 was unbelievable for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had the good fortune to first work with the Alvin Ailey company as an 18 year old scholarship student at Jacob\u2019s Pillow.\u00a0 I was very taken with his work, it could reach people in visceral ways.\u00a0 Alvin\u2019s dancing was spectacular, sensual, almost animal -like.\u00a0 The Ailey company returned many times to the Pillow in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_lock":["1575226389:182"],"_edit_last":["182"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n