Precipice

Precipice was inspired by the lives of two rock singers who died in the 1970s—Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix—who, at the peak of their success, were constantly driven toward self-destruction. It is, in some ways, a ballet about loneliness, in which a hero, trapped by the paradox of his times, finds himself at the edge of the precipice. The Company premiere of the work starred the French dancer Patrick Dupond appearing as a guest artist and Monique Loudières of the Paris Opera Ballet in her United States debut.

Interestingly, Alvin Ailey turned not to Morrison's and Hendrix's music but to “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls” by two young jazz and experimental composers, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. The music often sounds dreamlike and sets a hallucinatory mood for the ballet. There is a feeling of suspension of time —a blurring of past and present.