Director of the program and Co-Director of The Ailey School Tracy Inman says benefits of Ailey Horton go beyond technique. “What inspired Mr. Ailey so much is the way that Lester Horton presented the material,” Mr. Inman said. “The fact that there were so many different people in the room, different backgrounds, different cultures—that really inspired Mr. Ailey to take on this technique. It wasn't just a matter of steps; it's really about storytelling and a sense of belonging.
That expansion beyond technical proficiency is what the Ailey Teacher Certification Program promises to develop in its first cohort. The program guides teachers in exploring the creative potential and expressive depth of the technique. “You're trying to develop an artist, not just a technician,” Mr. Inman said. “The challenge is getting people to think beyond just the shape, to dig deep and figure out, ‘exactly how does it work?’ In terms of Mr. Ailey's ballets and how he used it—that emotional part, that connection with the audience—how do you take a simple shape and what does that mean to the audience? We want participants to understand that creative process.”
One quality of Ailey Horton technique that makes it so valuable for training proficient dancers with the possibility of long careers is its simplicity and clarity, which houses a physiological complexity. “The technique is easy to see,” Mr. Inman said. "It's geometric in shape and the shapes are clear. There's not a lot of difficult variations to the shapes. It’s easy to see but difficult to achieve beyond a surface level understanding. The in-depth negotiation, the embodiment of the movement and the shapes, is challenging. That's where that strength of body and mind comes together.”
The Ailey Teacher Certification Program is designed to teach dance educators/artists how to pace their teaching in a way that ensures students fully embody and understand the material before progressing. “I think what I've learned over the years is that you have to reach everyone in the room,” Mr. Inman said.
You need to get each student to understand why they're doing what they're doing. It's embodied; it's not just something they have in their head.
Another innovative feature of the program is the historical research component. Mr. Inman and Lakey Evans-Peña, associate director of the program, feel that it’s essential for teachers to be able to share the history of the technique with students. They want to ensure teachers pass on the knowledge that Alvin Ailey’s mentor Lester Horton developed the technique and Mr. Ailey expanded on it, which impacted the development of American modern dance. The technique is at the core of several of Mr. Ailey’s ballets and has been a fundamental component of The Ailey School’s training for decades.
“You often hear, you don't know where you're going unless you know where you've come from, and this is a prime example of that,” Mr. Inman said. “What's so amazing to me is to see the fundamental movement being incorporated into his ballets like Blues Suite, Revelations, and Night Creature, and how the same steps can be taken from one ballet and mean something completely different than in another ballet. There’s a completely different feeling, a completely different manner of storytelling in the various ballets that he created.”
Together, these components distinguish Ailey Horton as a vital modern dance technique: dedication to a studied physical practice, understanding of the cultural and historical context, and the application of the technique as an artistic mode of expression.
Before becoming Co-Director of The Ailey School, Mr. Inman studied at The Ailey School, joined Ailey II and then danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater under the Artistic Direction of Judith Jamison. He learned the Ailey Horton technique from Ana Marie Forsythe, Milton Myers, and Ms. Jamison as a student and dancer, and that lineage still serves him in his own teaching. “I often now hear myself sounding just like Ms. Jamison, saying the exact same things,” he said. “Finally, I understand it all these years later. That's what she meant. When you can see it in front of you and you're not doing it, when you see it. Then you go, ‘Aha! There it is.’”
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