“When I was 14 I discovered the theater and it touched something in me — but there was nobody Black,” says Alvin Ailey in a new trailer for Jamila Wignot’s “Ailey.” The Sundance doc pays tribute to the trailblazing choreographer and founder one of the world’s most renowned contemporary dance companies, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. “I love creating something where there was nothing before,” he emphasizes in the spot.
Featuring archival imagery and interviews with those who knew him as well as Ailey’s own words, the film reflects on the visionary’s life and legacy, and follows the creation of a new dance commission inspired by him. Ailey died in 1989. He received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 from then-President Barack Obama.
“I want people to be thinking about themes of self acceptance and self-love, the power of self-definition, of seeing yourself not as others see you, but as you are, and embracing that,” Wignot said of her hopes for “Ailey.” “I want people to be thinking about the boundlessness of Black joy and about beauty as a means of resistance. I want people to leave the theater thinking about freedom and what it means to get free.”
Wignot’s credits include the Peabody, Emmy, and NAACP award-winning series “The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” and “Town Hall.” She co-directed the latter with Sierra Pettingill.
“Ailey” arrives in theaters July 23.
