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JUDITH JAMISON: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
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Ailey gave Jamison a solo, "Cry," in 1971. It put her on the international dance map. Sixteen nonstop minutes of dancing, it became her signature work. That same year she married Miguel Godreau, a young Puerto Rican company member; the marriage lasted only nine months. (Godreau died in 1996.) She won awards, learned dozens more dances, and finally found partners (like Clive Thompson and, briefly, Mikhail Baryshnikov) who could handle her imposing physique. She guested with other companies and helped choreograph opera.
In 1980, Jamison left the company to star on Broadway in "Sophisticated Ladies." Then she returned, choreographing for scholarship students and discovering, to her delight, that Ailey wanted her compositions for the first company. She made dances for several other ensembles as well, and in the mid-'80s founded the Jamison Project, a pickup company of 12 that toured with her work. She taught at Philadelphia's University of the Arts and at Jacob's Pillow, collected several honorary doctorates, and was ready, when the call came, to fill in for Ailey in the months before his death from AIDS in 1989.
Jamison has made dances of heroic scale out of everyday human materials. In 1993's "Hymn," she used the biographies of her dancers. In "Sweet Release," a 1996 work to an original score by Wynton Marsalis, she dramatized the struggle of a young couple to hold a marriage together in the face of numerous temptations. Her dance "Echo: Far from Home," which premiered in 1998, condenses a career spanning 40 years into a few minutes, recalling pivotal scenes and characters.
Herself a glamorous figure, Jamison imbues her dances with tasteful surfaces -- high-tech lighting, elegant costumes, large-scale scenic elements. It's almost as though she wants to chronicle a generation of African Americans who have arrived, have mastered their craft, and are free to show off -- to be gorgeous, to reveal their buff bodies onstage as the fabulous creatures she has helped them become. While Ailey took it upon himself to record and display aspects of the black past, she seems intent on looking to the future while preserving the best of his legacy.
"I'm standing on Alvin's shoulders," she says in DANCING SPIRIT. And, with the help of a large, well-oiled organization, she's leading his company on to glory.
Excerpted from an essay originally featured on the DANCE IN AMERICA: A HYMN FOR ALVIN AILEY (1999) Web companion.
Top banner photos: Clifton Brown, Matthew Rushing, and Dwana Adiaha Smallwood; Dwana Adiaha Smallwood; and Matthew Rushing (all photos by Paul Kolnik -- Thirteen/WNET).
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Artistic Director Judith Jamison with senior members of the company (photo by Paul Kolnik -- Thirteen/WNET). |  |
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Dancer Clifton Brown joined AAADT in 1999 (photo by Paul Kolnik -- Thirteen/WNET). | |
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A DVD of the film is available from CustomFlix.com/210784. | |
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