Double Exposure

Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison choreographed Double Exposure—her eighth ballet for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater—for the Lincoln Center Festival in 2000. It has a unique and inventive movement vocabulary combined with electronic scenic elements and a sleek jazz score.  

Ms. Jamison discussed the concept of Double Exposure:

"Robbi [Ruggieri] came to me with this idea. He said Double Exposure was a very interesting title for something he was working on musically. I related to it immediately. I responded to Robbi by saying that I had been interested in choreographing a male pas de deux. I was also captivated by the concept of showing two sides of one person. We are all multi-layered and multi-level human beings. This was a way to show two aspects of one person. The women got into the story as catalysts because in my ballets I always have some strong, powerful female figures. In that sense, they broke down as three elements of one woman. Everybody thinks that the three women are me, but it really is just three different ways of moving me. They are like the Greek chorus in ancient theater because they know the two men are really one personality. It also has to do with the idea of the masculine-feminine qualities that each one of us encompasses.

"I wasn't exactly trying to reach another level of movement. This is what came out of me in the creative process. I did know that I wanted to appreciate each woman's idiosyncrasies, and I love to work the men in tandem. John Butler used to make me crazy watching what he would do with his dancers in tandem. 

"I choreographed the dance first and then layered it with the technological mechanics later. Technology was new to me, and I had seen Mark Coniglio's performance downtown. His ability to marry what was happening on stage with the cameras and film was fascinating.

"For me, what is happening on stage is real. I need the audience to know that we didn't film this ahead of time. It's spontaneous. It is a whole different perspective of looking at movement and dance together with film. It is certainly an intimate and generous experience simultaneously, which is hard to attain. But that is what Alvin Ailey was all about: the ability to see things from a different point of view. He encouraged us to make room for the possibilities to take us on another journey. It's an additional kind of exposure."