Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Artistic Director Emerita Has Died

Judith Jamison, a consummate dancer, choreographer, and artistic director, has died. The acclaimed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Artistic Director  (AADT) Emerita, 81, passed away following a brief illness, according to Christopher Zunner, a spokesperson for the dance company. “We remember and are grateful for her artistry, humanity, and incredible light, which inspired us all,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

Judith Ann Jamison was born in Philadelphia on May 10, 1943. Her parents, Tessie Bell (Brown) Jamison, occasionally taught drama at the elementary school level, and her dad, John Henry Jamison, was a sheet metal engineer who dreamed of being a classical pianist. They met while singing in the church choir of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. According to the New York Times, she and her older brother, John Jr., lived in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and were exposed to lots of music.

According to the PBS documentary “Free to Dance,” Jamison was already tall at age six, so her parents enrolled her in dance to complement her exceptional height with grace. She took ballet lessons at the Judimar School of Dance at six and continued until 17. The paper says that she attended Fisk University before deciding to pursue dance and transferred to Philadelphia Dance Academy.

Her first big break came when she worked with the choreographer Agnes de Mille on The Four Marys For The American Ballet Theater, featuring Carmen de Lavallade. It premiered in 1965. After that, 5’10” Jamison couldn’t find work, and auditions proved disappointing, so she had to do other work.

Nothing in my life, until then, had prepared me for rejection,” she told Dance Magazine. “Every time I was turned down, I took it personally.”It was at one such unsuccessful audition that summer for Donald McKayle that Alvin Ailey spotted her and decided to ask her to join his company. (“You mean, you decided to take me that day, the day of the audition?” Jamison asked Ailey when the two told the story of their first encounter to Maynard. “I went home and cried for three days until you called me!” Ailey replied, “Well, I didn’t know where to find you, and I had to get your phone number from Carmen [de Lavallade], and Carmen was out of town.”).

The documentary recounts that Jamison toured Europe and Africa with the Ailey company in 1966. The company had financial challenges in 1967, so Jamison danced with the Harkness Ballet. When she returned to the reformed AADT, Jamison was a Principal dancer. She was Ailey’s muse and was featured in many of the company’s works. She was the Goddess Erzuile in Geoffrey Holder’s “The Prodigal Prince,” she did a duet with ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov,  set to music by Duke Ellington, “Pas de Duke,” did an amazing solo works “Masakala,” and “Cry,” her 15-minute tour-de-force that propelled her to stardom. A quote from Dance Magazine describes the power of the latter performance.

“There is about her an aura of mysticism. She appears onstage, larger than life, more an apparition than a performer, compelling us to look upon her as we might a temple dancer—with a sense of religiosity, of awe.”

Those were the opening lines of Olga Maynard’s November 1972 Dance Magazine cover story on Judith Jamison, then in her late 20s and at the height of her powers as a star performer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

In 1980, Jamison left the company to star in a Broadway musical, “Sophisticated Ladies,” set to Duke Ellington’s tunes. Later, she started her own eponymous dance company, the Jamison Project.

According to her bio, in 1989, Mr. Ailey asked her to return to the AADT and asked her to succeed him. In the twenty-one years that followed, Ms. Jamison grew the company’s prominence nationally and internationally. There were two separate historic engagements in South Africa. The company celebrated its 50th anniversary with a 50-city global tour.

Ms. Jamison was recognized by The Kennedy Center Honors in 1999. The same year, she won an Emmy award in the Best Choreography category for “Dance in America: A Hymn for Alvin Ailey. “

She also received a National Medal of Arts in 2001 and “A TIME 100: Most Influential People in 2009” and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance in 2015.

Jamison has left a body of work that will continue to be performed by dancers for years to come. She inspired many generations of dancers. May her legacy live on. They include: “Divining,” “Forgotten Time,” “Riverside,” and “Double Exposure,” among others.