Blues Suite is the ballet that launched the sensational Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958. What is extraordinary is that Alvin Ailey was just 27 years old when the dance premiered and it was only the sixth ballet that he had choreographed. Blues Suite is often documented as Mr. Ailey’s first masterpiece, where he had found his own miraculous voice as a creative artist presenting real people on the concert dance stage, defining his choreographic genius.
As Jennifer Dunning wrote in her book Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance, "[Blues Suite] is set in a 'sporting house.' The characters are the men and women who frequent the place, drinking, dancing, and flirting to the music of the blues over the course of a night that ends with the early morning sounds of a train and church bells."
The New York Times adds: “Created two years before the first version of Revelations, it has often been described as that spiritual work’s secular counterpart, a representation of the Saturday night sinning that precedes the Sunday churchgoing… hailed for its social observation, for putting ‘real people’ onstage, characters from the milieu of Ailey’s Southern childhood, then underrepresented.”
This production of Blues Suite was made possible with major support from American Express.
Generous support was also provided by The Ellen Jewett & Richard L. Kauffman New Works Endowment Fund.
Members of the Company in Blues Suite, photo by Paul Kolnik
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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Blues Suite, photo by Paul Kolnik