Jennifer Dunning

Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) was a choreographic giant in the modern dance world and a champion of African-American talent and culture. His interracial Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater provided opportunities to black dancers and choreographers when no one else would. His acclaimed “Revelations” remains one of the most performed modern dance pieces in the twentieth century. But he led a tortured life, filled with insecurity and self-loathing. Raised in poverty in rural Texas by his single mother, he managed to find success early in his career, but by the 1970s his creativity had waned. He turned to drugs, alcohol, and gay bars and suffered a nervous breakdown in 1980. He was secretive about his private life, including his homosexuality, and, unbeknownst to most at the time, died from AIDS-related complications at age 58.Now, for the first time, the complete story of Ailey's life and work is revealed in this biography. Based on his personal journals and hundreds of interviews with those who knew him, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Judith Jamison, Lena Horne, Katherine Dunham, Sidney Poitier, and Dustin Hoffman, Alvin Ailey is a moving story of a man who wove his life and culture into his dance.

A Life In Dance

Alvin Ailey

Constance Valis Hill

Gregory Hines

They were two of the most explosive dancers of the twentieth century, dazzling audiences with daredevil splits, slides, and hair-raising flips. But they were also highly sophisticated dancers, refining a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic brilliance of jazz tap at its zenith. They were Fayard and Harold Nicholas, two American masters masterfully portrayed in this new dual biography by Constance Valis Hill. In Brotherhood in Rhythm, Hill interweaves an intimate portrait of these great performers with a richly detailed history of jazz music and jazz dance, both bringing their act to life and explaining their significance through a colorful analysis of their eloquent footwork, their full-bodied expressiveness, and their changing style.

The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers

Brotherhood in Rhythm

Born and reared in a Trinidad artistic family, Holder is a painter, director, set and costume designer, choreographer, dancer, actor, and musician. He has directed and designed musicals on Broadway, danced at the Metropolitan Opera House, had his paintings exhibited in museums and acquired by collectors, designed costumes for films, and acted.

Jennifer Dunning

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