Dance at the Gym

When Donald Byrd choreographed Dance at the Gym for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1991, he took inspiration from a film choreographed 30 years earlier—Jerome Robbins' 1961 West Side Story. Using the "Dance at the Gym" number from the movie as a counterpoint, Byrd explored the idea of how young people in a charged environment look at each other and interact.  

What struck Byrd in the movie was that despite the potential for violence, the characters in West Side Story came to the dance at the gym with a sense of hopefulness; they came to have a good time. "Now there's a kind of cynicism in young people," he says. "Their sense of violence—that violence is around them all the time—makes it an acceptable environment, so the kids are edgier. They're not as affected by those kinds of things. But what they are affected by, and what they display differently, are their hormones. The kids back then were affected by the same things, but there were a set of mores and behaviors around how you displayed it. I think in my ballet, that's the biggest contrast—there's a kind of open, overt display of sensuality and an acceptability in being aggressive and forward. I think ultimately where the two people in the Robbins piece find love, the kids in my piece discover tenderness in a world where there's none. At the end of the ballet, there's a sense that they've said, 'Oh, maybe there's this thing called tenderness.'"