Would you describe the work of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as black dance or African-American dance? Well, there's one thing that's very obvious. It's called the Ailey American Dance Theatre, not the Alvin Ailey African-American Dance Theatre. One thing also that Alvin wanted people to recognize, he had to wake up black every day. That's not an issue. His culture is an issue, not his color, his culture. So he really negated the fact that there was such a thing as a black choreographer. ... He would like to be identified -- he wanted to be identified as a choreographer who happened to have a culture of African Americanism, but also a culture of America, which includes everybody. So that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, with 180 works, 180 ballets that are not all about the African-American experience but about the experience of living in this country and of going around the world several times and understanding that we're all a part of a whole. So that our repertory is reflective of being a human being. How has Ailey changed American modern dance? The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as -- as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison. ... What Alvin has done for modern dance in the United States and in the world is, number one, say ... not "You're my competition, move over," but "You are welcome to come and participate in the avenue of dance." It's a very broad street, you know? And I am not remembering right now ... who else was doing that? Who else was giving their peers the chance to be seen worldwide? You know, if anyone has done that in a major way, it's Alvin Ailey. He's the one that has kept those choreographers that some of us have forgotten in your face. He's the one that has introduced choreographers you never heard of and given them exposure. Anyone that works with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater knows that their work will be seen around the work and danced extraordinarily. That's his contribution, his idea that dance is a generous thing, that you don't clutch it, that you don't hold on to it and say, "It's mine. It's my role." But can you imagine if I claimed that "Cry" was mine and that nobody else could do it? Granted, nobody else can do it like me, but they're not supposed to. And Alvin gave everyone a venue, as I have in the last ten years I've been running the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, to come in and to understand what it's like to be an individual in dance, understand what it's like to be uniquely different, not feel that you could be laughed at or put upon, but be vulnerable and be loved for your idiosyncrasies, be loved for your generosity. Alvin gave us all a chance to do that. I mean when you joined the company, you knew that as a dancer you'd have the repertory of life to dance, that you were -- I mean some of the first people I worked with -- Anna Sokolow doing "Rooms," then turning around and doing Talley Beatty's "The Road of the Phoebe Snow," and then doing Alvin's "Blues Suite." I mean it's just -- it was a cornucopia of work ... a body of work that it was a full plate, it was a full meal. The experience of understanding how the full body works, how all of you works and how not to put down any way of moving, that -- that all movement has its validity as long as you bring your truth to it. ... I'm working with two dancers now, Matthew Rushing and Clifton Brown. One is 19 and the other's 25 years old. Matthew Rushing, a phenomenon who's been in the company for seven years. He's 25. Seven years he's been in the company. And he is putting Clifton under his wing and helping him along. That's his generous nature as a dancer, of course. And Clifton is [a] very talented youth of 19. And I'm working with both of them. They're working faster than I can create. They are so good. They get things so much quicker. ... Alvin has given us the capacity, as I continue to do, the capacity to exercise that stuff between here, you know, that's going on in the mind connected to the body and have a dancer that can work at such speeds so that they can create a performance in an instant, a performance as soon as you give them movement. Now that comes from being exposed to everything that is given to you as an artist in the company. Describe what it was like to work with Talley Beatty. Well, one of the first things that you noticed when -- as a dancer, when you're doing Talley's work, is the high structure of Graham, ballet, and stylistic jazz in his work. And if you are not adept at every technique you ever learned in your life, then you're in trouble in Talley's work because it moves at the speed of light. ... His work is precise and in that one little contraction in "Stormy Weather," in that scene you see Talley do this kind of contraction that he was so famous for doing, so that he'd always, you know, breathe up when he would contract, you know, so you knew that contraction was not supposed to go down. That says "Talley" in a nutshell. Everything was up. It was up. Even when you were down, it was supposed to be up and it was supposed to be a hundred miles an hour. His subtlety in movement could be appreciated when he would demonstrate. His temper was something if you weren't gettin' it fast enough, that's all. You know, get it, get it. You know what it is. You know what your body's capable of doing. Do it, you know? There was no time to waste with any artist, but particularly with Talley, unless you did want to raise his rancor. Was he particularly known for incorporating the vernacular, a street vocabulary or everyday movements, into his ballets? A street vocabulary? But, as an American ... a choreographer like Talley or Alvin or Donnie, you -- you have to use the vernacular because it's a part of you. That's what ... the American culture has certainly been about ... certainly in social dancing, prime example of where a lot of movement comes from that eventually gets on the stage one way or another, that eventually certainly goes into other people's cultures. ... I mean, I go around the world and I see movement that is certainly African-American culturally on Swiss people, on French people, on African people. Alvin said that ... dance should be given back to people 'cause that's where it came from, that's exactly what he meant, that the movement, real truthful movement comes from those people that you see right out there, you know, doing what they're doing, doing what you did when you were a young person. Those are -- are unadulterated movements and so they can be applicable to modern dance, if you -- if you so wish. ... That is the composition of modern dance, and Talley understood that, as did Alvin, as did -- does any artist understand that they are -- they are allowed to live on the tree of life. They're allowed to sit on each other's shoulders. Yeah, "The Stack-Up" deals with social issues. It's fine. It's all right to deal with social issues, or not deal with social issues. One thing that I hate in ballets, in dances that are done, is sometimes people insist that you have to have a social issue if it's modern dance, which I think is ridiculous. However, Talley felt a need to express what he was seeing in the humming and the -- the activity and the energy of the street and of young people in the context of the kind of movement, the kind of fast-paced movement, the urgent entrances and exits. The colors, I mean, are wonderful when you watch "The Stack-Up." The relationships, that there are different kind of uptown relationships and downtown relationships and there are -- yes, there are drug addicts and there are young people that are corrupted by drugs. Why not tell that story? Or tell another story if you want to, you know?