That's what's so wonderful about -- what's wonderful about Talley's use of jazz. I mean think of the Miles Davis things he used and the Ellington things he used. Who -- who else was doing this? It's very difficult to choreograph to jazz music. People avoid it sometimes because it is so difficult, but Talley had an innate understanding of how he fit into the equation of the way jazz moved, of the way Ellington's music moved, of the mood of Miles Davis' music. ... "Black Belt" ends with a riot, and this was done in the '60s. And we were throwing televisions across the stage and running across with sofas, you know, and screaming and police cars. Talley felt that was a necessary statement. When you think of "Masakela Language" that Alvin Ailey did, there was a statement that he had to make about South Africa before anybody was really talkin' about it in 1969, you know? Sometimes there are ballets that need to have -- be a reflection of what's going on, but I would suggest to you that that is not always the case, that dance can cover as much of serious abstraction as it can about reality. What was it like to work with Ulysses Dove? Ah, Ulysses Dove. Perfectionist, an absolute perfectionist, so much so that each dancer that has ever had to do his work is more or less frozen in fear (laughs). ... They go onstage to do his work, frozen in the fact that they know that they have to be perfect. He's been gone now for the last two years. He passed away, but this man's energy was aimed so high and his message, his physical message, his choreographic message was so cut and crystal clear that there was no shying to one side or the other, no gray area, no gray area. ... You can cut the tension with a knife backstage whenever there's a Dove piece that's being -- it's a different kind of tension than, say, a Talley piece. There's another kind of tension than an Ailey piece. ... In "Vespers," for instance, you'll hear him using words to -- to get the dancers to move in a certain way. He has a vocabulary of words, of breathing, of saying things to them that will propel them into doing five turns at the speed of light and then reversing themselves and jumping up in the air and hooking and then arching back all at the same time and sitting down in those chairs and cutting, slicing space, defining space by slicing it ... total commitment to being as riveting as possible, to -- I always say when you finish watching his work, you need a towel, you know, to wring out because he's just drawn you right into his work. And it's over. It's finished and you kind of go, "Ooh, oh, my goodness, what happened?" ... That's what a choreographer's supposed to do, leave you with that, touch you here and here. He did. What was it like when you first joined the Ailey company? So when I walked into the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, it was physically something that was very different than Ballet Theatre. Ballet Theatre was rehearsing in the hallowed halls of Lincoln Center. We went to Clark Center on 50th and Eighth Avenue in the YWCA on the second floor in -- in a studio that was not very big, with wooden floors and kind of mirrors up in the front and no air-conditioning of any kind ... but hot and warm. ... The first person I ran into was Jimmy Truitt, and I walked in and said, "Oh, my goodness, I'm here. I'm just so excited I'm here!" And Jimmy said, "Relax, girl. Don't even go there, okay? Relax. Go in and work," you know? "Oh, Mr. Ailey," you know? It wasn't even about that. Everybody was busy working! There was no time to do, oh, gah-gah-gah. There was time to go to work. And of course, for the next two weeks I had to learn like five ballets, six ballets, nine ballets, whatever, and then go out on the road with these dancers, who were marking in the rehearsing -- unbeknownst to me. I was working full-out. They were marking! I was killing myself! Got onstage. The first ballet I ever did was Talley Beatty's "Congo Tango Palace." You enter the stage backwards. The women entered the stage backwards. When I turned around on my one-two-three, I saw a blur of energy, of color, of lights, energy I'd never seen before. Talk about a transformation. I said, "Oh, this is what full-out is!" (Laughs.) You know? ... So there was this constant saving of energy, so when it came chance to rehearse, when you did, you didn't kill yourself. You kind of got out there and, you know, you knew what the basic, you know -- I didn't know that. I found out. ... It's great, I think, for a young dancer to come into a situation that -- that is embracing in a way that is not deep with competition, like you've got to -- you know, that dancer's better over there and better -- you know, they've got this on or that. There wasn't that sense at all. There was a sense of family when you walked into these rehearsals. And we worked until everybody got tired. If somebody -- you walked in at ten o'clock, you might leave at ten o'clock, because there was no such thing as a union and nobody was lookin' at the clock ... and the company could not be sustained. You know we didn't have that kind of support and money and all that. So you worked for as long as you wanted to work. When everybody said, you know, "Well, shall we take a break?" or "I'm takin' a break." "Okay. Well, if you're takin' a break, then I'll take a break." It was one of those, you know, kind of experiences that -- that lent itself to being a loving kind of family with fights and all ... a situation that would in the end produce an extraordinary performance that an audience would be totally moved by. The same thing still happens now. It does, except the family is enormous. It's enormous. But we have the same kind of fights. We have a same kind of loving. ... So that's part of what the transformation of being in this business for such a long time has been about, that -- that warmth of embrace of family. You know, still as it becomes more and more structured as a business, there's still the Ailey family. How did you become Artistic Director of the company, to run the company for him? In 1989 I was the associate -- what did he call me? He had a title for me -- Guest Associate. And I went on tour with the company in the United States ... and then in April of that year, Mr. Ailey sat me down and said, when we were [in] St. Louis in that marvelous train station they have where the hotel is, and he informed me that he was dying and he informed me that he really had in mind that I should take this company over. And my answer to him, since I had known he was sick for a while, was "Yeah, sure," even though I had the Project [her own company, the Judith Jamison Project]. Taking over the company did not ... it wasn't the transition that was so difficult. It didn't -- I didn't even think of it as a transition. I was just coming home. ... The job did not seem mammoth. It seemed like this is what is supposed to happen, which is the way I've accepted life all along. I mean you're there. As a dancer, you learn how to do that. The curtain goes up and you don't go, "Excuse me, I can't do this." You do what you have to do. So by the end of that tour, of course, he was really getting bad, and I was still running the Jamison Project and come flying in from wherever the Jamison Project was dancing to visit him at the hospital and then finally he passed on December the first, 1989. And I think I was declared the artistic director by the board on January 20th. But I had really been there all along. ... So I had this handle to grab hold of in Alvin's passing so that I was completely supported by a company who loved him and by an associate, a rehearsal director, 'cause that's what he was at the time, who was determined to support me, because he revered me and my work because he had watched me as an artist in the company. What -- what kind of better transition could you have ... because the life that Alvin left us, he -- it's a light he left us. So we're on -- it's like being on a beam. You know, it's like being on a beam. The beam is always this way [raising hand like an airplane taking off]. It's never level. It's like this. So you're gliding on this beam of light. Regardless of whether he's dead or not, you're gliding on the light that he's left, you know. And we talked about Miss Dunham earlier. He was gliding, he is gliding. She's still with us, thank God, but he's still gliding on her light. You know, it's all that -- it's all about that. If it wasn't about that, then there wouldn't be an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the company would not continue. If it was just about his physical presence, you know, that's -- that's nothing. That's nothing. But it's about what -- it's the wake that we are living in, what's left of that wonderful -- you know, it's the tail of an asteroid or, you know, it's that -- all that wonderful stuff and still ahead of us is the bright light, you understand, that we're all trying to aspire to. ... Alvin is part of that continuum. He's always been a part, Miss Dunham, Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, a continuation of that, Jawolle, Ron Brown. All these wonderful choreographers out of here are simply a continuation of this light that is continual since the beginning of time. It's like a heartbeat.