His smile was proportional to his height, 1.78 meters. It immediately enveloped you in a circle of positive energy. The radiant and naturally magnetic dancer Judith Jamison left brilliant footprints wherever she went. International star, muse of Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) in the 1970s, director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since 1989, died on November 9, in New York, at the age of 81.
Immediately the testimonies multiplied on Instagram to celebrate it. Mikhail Baryshnikov remembers “his emotional eloquence and his moderation” when he discovered her on stage. Choreographer Wayne McGregor greets the“Judith Jamison, inspiring, elegant and iconic”. The dancer Yannick Lebrun, who as a teenager played the ballet DVD on repeat. Hymnat his grandmother’s house in Guyana, he commented on the disappearance of the woman who hired him in 2008: “Words cannot express the immense amount of love and gratitude I have for you, Judi… Thank you for your grace, your courage, your strength, your tenacity in carrying on Ailey’s legacy. Thank you for making my dreams come true…”
Judith Jamison was born on May 10, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He learned to play the piano and violin from his father. She was 6 years old when she was introduced to classical and modern dance, then tap dancing, acrobatics and the technique of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), a pioneering African American activist. Some ten years later, here she is a student at the Philadelphia Dance Academy, where the curious and reckless learns everything she can, honing a flexible and receptive body.
lyrical power
The choreographer Agnès de Mille (1905-1993) hired him in 1964 at the American Ballet Theater in New York. A year later, he joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: he was 22 years old. She quickly revealed herself as one of Ailey’s leading performers, electrifying many of the choreographer’s shows with her lyrical power, including his best-seller, Revelations (1960). In the already historic alone Cry (1971), designed for her in music of John Coltrane and gospel, carries high, between the pain and the bite, the torch of a piece dedicated to Ailey’s mother and “all black women “.
His talent captivates and has earned him numerous collaborations such as with the Cullberg Ballet, in Sweden, or the Ballet du XX.my century, where Maurice Béjart asked him to support his version of rose ghostin 1978. Two years later, he appeared on Broadway in sophisticated ladiesHe then founded the Jamison Project in 1988, before taking the reins of his company at Ailey’s request.
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