Revelations: Dance and Gospel Music
Introduction
Alvin Ailey was a choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958. It was a hugely popular, multi-racial modern dance ensemble that popularized modern dance around the world thanks to extensive world tours. His most famous dance is Revelations, a celebratory study of religious spirit. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988. Ailey's philosophy to art is clear in his work - he desired his performers to follow his meticulous choreography, but have each performer express that choreography in their own style. He use as a stimulus about the fact that the suffering and hardship faced by African Americans and feudalism and slavery.
Revelations tells the story of African-American faith and tenacity from slavery to freedom through a suite of dances set to spirituals and blues music. Revelations is divided into three sections "Pilgrims of Sorrow", "Take Me to the Water" and "Move Members, Move". As an example, The opening section of Revelations. Ailey described this section as "songs that yearn for deliverance, that speak of trouble and of this world's trials and tribulations." The mood is reflected in unique gestures with heads bowed down and forward and heavy bodies reaching powerfully upward. The sombre music and the lighting effects (by lighting designer Nicola Cernovitch) and brown and skin toned costuming help with this. The second section features an enactment of a ceremonial baptism. A large group of dancers clad in white sweep onto the stage as baptismal agents—a tree branch to sweep the earth and a white cloth to cleanse the sky—lead a processional to the stream of purification. To the strains of "Wade in the Water" a devotional leader bearing a large umbrella baptizes a young couple at a river, represented by yards of billowing blue silk stretched across the stage. A raucous ceremony is followed by the meditative solo "I Wanna Be Ready", which communicates a devout man's preparations for death. Lastly, In Move
Alvin Ailey was a choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958. It was a hugely popular, multi-racial modern dance ensemble that popularized modern dance around the world thanks to extensive world tours. His most famous dance is Revelations, a celebratory study of religious spirit. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988. Ailey's philosophy to art is clear in his work - he desired his performers to follow his meticulous choreography, but have each performer express that choreography in their own style. He use as a stimulus about the fact that the suffering and hardship faced by African Americans and feudalism and slavery.
Revelations tells the story of African-American faith and tenacity from slavery to freedom through a suite of dances set to spirituals and blues music. Revelations is divided into three sections "Pilgrims of Sorrow", "Take Me to the Water" and "Move Members, Move". As an example, The opening section of Revelations. Ailey described this section as "songs that yearn for deliverance, that speak of trouble and of this world's trials and tribulations." The mood is reflected in unique gestures with heads bowed down and forward and heavy bodies reaching powerfully upward. The sombre music and the lighting effects (by lighting designer Nicola Cernovitch) and brown and skin toned costuming help with this. The second section features an enactment of a ceremonial baptism. A large group of dancers clad in white sweep onto the stage as baptismal agents—a tree branch to sweep the earth and a white cloth to cleanse the sky—lead a processional to the stream of purification. To the strains of "Wade in the Water" a devotional leader bearing a large umbrella baptizes a young couple at a river, represented by yards of billowing blue silk stretched across the stage. A raucous ceremony is followed by the meditative solo "I Wanna Be Ready", which communicates a devout man's preparations for death. Lastly, In Move