The dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison died yesterday in a Manhattan hospital.
A titanic figure, rising to five-foot-ten, she commanded the stage until Mikhail Baryshnikov arrived, at which point they arrested global attention as the Russian-American, black-white ‘Pas de Duke’.
As Ailey’s successor, Judith stabilised the company as a central pillar of American dance.
UPDATE: Alastair Macaulay writes on social media:
In the days following an American election result that strikes many of us as the end of Western civilisation, it is good not only to recall Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 but to recall Jamison’s words that December at the New York City Center Theater gala for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She was probably the most exciting orator I have ever heard in the dance world. That night, she was on a peak.
She spoke proudly of the Ailey company’s past, she connected its African-American element gently to its transcendent success, and then, almost as if in passing, she linked this to the election of the first black president of the United States. Throughout her speech, the applause had already been rising like a tide; now it seemed like a river breaking its banks: at which point Jamison, her voice riding over the audience like a surfer on an ocean wave, announced, “You must enjoy every moment of this!” Did she mean enjoy every moment of the gala? Did she mean enjoy every moment of the Ailey company’s overall achievement? Or did she mean enjoy every moment of the Obama election and presidency? As Jamison spoke that night, it felt that there was no need to separate any of these glories.
I met her once or twice; I remember asking her about her skill as an orator. She laughed as if it was something she could not help – it was part of her Philadelphia black birthright.
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