Opening on Wednesday, September 25, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Edges of Ailey is the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dance, influences, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, TX; d. 1989, NYC). The comprehensive interdisciplinary showcase examines the full range of Ailey’s personal and creative life, passions and curiosities, within a continuum of other artists and events spanning nearly two centuries, bringing together visual art, live performance, music, a range of archival materials that encompasses photographs, letters, handwritten notes, postcards, posters, and his short stories and poems (with special acknowledgment to the Allan Gray Family Foundation and the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City for access), plus a multi-screen video installation drawn from recordings of the repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AADT), founded by its namesake in 1958, at the age of 27. Together, these elements form an extensively researched and brilliantly curated account, survey, and tribute to the legendary artist’s life, career, and far-reaching impact on the evolution of dance, Black creativity, and American culture, affirming Ailey’s place as one of the most culturally and historically significant artistic figures in the United States and around the world. The Whitney Museum of Art. Photo by Deb Miller. Edges of Ailey, gallery installation. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Audrey Wang. Edges of Ailey, art and videos. Photo by Ray Costello. Presented at the Museum in multiple parts, the 18,000 square-foot fifth-floor gallery exhibition, curated by Adrienne Edwards (Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs), with Joshua Lubin-Levy (Curatorial Research Associate) and CJ Salapare (Curatorial Assistant), features the work of over 80 artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Alma Thomas, Jacob Lawrence, Rashid Johnson, Kevin Beasley, Kara Walker, and many others showing cross-inspiration, shared motifs, and common interests with Ailey, a gay Black man who lived through the seminal period of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Gay Liberation Movements, and died of complications due to AIDS. Arranged thematically, the sections consider such significant topics as the Southern Imaginary, with its roots in the Caribbean, Brazil, and West Africa; the endurance and practices of Black Spirituality; The Great Black Migration to the North; and Ailey’s Influences, including Black women, music, and dance. Edges of Ailey, Alvin Ailey dancing. Photo by Deb Miller. Edges of Ailey, gallery installation. Photo by Ray Costello. There’s an area dedicated to Ailey’s association with the theater – noting that during his early days in NYC, he took classes with Stella Adler and appeared in such iconic productions as Call Me by My Rightful Name (1961) and Tiger Tiger Burning Bright (1962), in addition to being a guest choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Antony and Cleopatra at Lincoln Center (1966) – as well as his connection with such major artists of the Harlem Renaissance as Langston Hughes, the next generation’s James Baldwin (born in Harlem during the period), and jazz legend Duke Ellington. And there’s a series of photos of Ailey over the years by portrait photographer Carl van Vechten (a patron of the Harlem Renaissance), and a space hung with posters of some of Ailey’s many shows, with a video documenting a staggering total of 4,122 concert performances choreographed by him and others. Edges of Ailey also offers a live dance program with weekly performances, talks, and workshops in the Whitney’s third-floor theater, with the AILEY organization in residence at the Whitney for one week each month, for a total of five weeks and more than 90 performances. When AILEY is not in residence at the Museum, a series of dance commissions by leading choreographers and their collaborators will be showcased, including Ronald K. Brown, Trajal Harrell, Bill T. Jones, and Ralph Lemon, with interdisciplinary artist Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Will Rawls, Matthew Rushing, Yusha-Marie Sorzano, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Edges of Ailey. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Natasha Moustache. Isaiah Day. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Natasha Moustache. Coral Dolphin. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Natasha Moustache. Corinth Moulterie, Jordyn White, and Hannah Alissa Richardson. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Natasha Moustache. The exhibition and performances are accompanied by a 388-page hardcover catalogue, edited by Edwards (with contributions by Horace D. Ballard, Harmony Bench, Kate Elswit, Aimee Meredith Cox, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Malik Gaines, Jasmine Johnson, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Uri McMillan, Ariel Osterweis, J Wortham, CJ Salapare, Kyle Abraham, Claire Bishop, Masazumi Chaya, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Jennifer Homans, Judith Jamison, Sylvia Waters, Jamila Wignot, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar), illustrated with more than 400 photographs, and distributed for the Whitney by Yale University Press. If you can’t make it to the Museum, you can order the expansive and revelatory catalogue (ISBN 978-0-300-27884-2; $65) online. For a preview of the show, watch the video below: Edges of Ailey runs September 25, 2024-February 9, 2025, at the Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, NYC. For advance tickets (priced at $30 for adults, $24 for seniors and students with valid ID, $18 for visitors with disabilities, and free for ages 18 and under), go online.