Alvin Ailey’s performing arts transcend the traditional boundaries of dance. The pioneering dancer and choreographer created a living history of movement, steeped in cultural memory and personal expression. Through his choreography and his company’s performances, he seamlessly intertwined stories of Black, American, and queer identity, exploring themes of struggle and liberation in performances that were both physically dynamic and deeply rooted in the human condition. His expansive vision of what modern dance could be – flexible, inclusive and multidisciplinary – makes his work an ideal centerpiece for Whitney’s first-ever exhibition dedicated to a performing artist.

Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum of American Art combines performance footage, recorded interviews, and notes from the late choreographer’s personal archive with paintings, sculptures, music, and installations by more than 80 artists. As Ailey herself reflected in a 1984 interview, “There was movement, there was color, there was painting, there was sculpture, and there was bringing it all together.” This holistic approach allows the two sides of the exhibition – Ailey’s life and work alongside art relating to or inspired by him – to coexist harmoniously, with each side enriching the other to create a more complete story of American culture composes.

The exhibition’s direct references to dance include Barkley Hendricks’ painting “Dancer” (1977), featuring a black woman in a white leotard against a white ground; Senga Nengudi’s sculpture “RSVP” (1975), which evokes a body or body parts through stretched nylon tights and sand; and two paintings of dancers in rehearsal by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, one of which was created especially for this exhibition. These works are complemented by a video projection on 18 screens of various performances by Ailey, played on a loop through the space and accompanied by scores by Josh Begley and Kya Lou. Another section features videos from musicians, dancers and choreographers who influenced Ailey, including Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Carmen de Lavallade and Duke Ellington.

But the real appeal of the exhibition lies in the opportunity to connect on a personal level with the legendary Alvin Ailey through his notebooks, diary entries, letters and other ephemera carefully organized alongside corresponding works of art. Ailey was a meticulous note-taker and recorded his life in meticulous detail. On Monday, September 20, 1982, he completes his daily details: “Woke up at 10:30, called from Atlanta, watched soaps and drank tea, called Ernie at 12:13, Sylvia called at 2:00 to talk about… .” But in other notes, such as the one from 1980 that reads “nervous breakdown, 7 weeks in hospital,” Ailey’s brevity emphasizes the overwhelming weight of the experience of a nervous breakdown, a reality that may be too heavy or painful to express in words . Appropriately placed next to this entry is Rashid Johnson’s “Anxious Men” (2016), a drawn alter ego of the artist’s own fears.

Ailey was born in 1931 into a family of sharecroppers in rural Texas at the height of the Great Depression and was raised by his mother after his father abandoned them. Constantly looking for work, she moved them from town to town; at one point, when Ailey was just five, he helped her pick cotton. This upbringing, steeped in the struggles of Southern black life and the spiritual foundation of the church, profoundly shaped his most iconic work. Revelations. Drawing from the gospel, blues and spirituality that surrounded him as a child, he transformed these memories into a montage of pain, hope and redemption. Works such as John Bigger’s portrait of a tired but resilient black man, ‘Sharecropper’ (1945), characterized by its dark and somber tones, or ‘Haze’ (2023), Kevin Beasley’s landscape painting of a few trees against a yellow sky in the distance . South, depict histories that visually resonate with Ailey’s creations.

In 1941, Ailey and his mother joined the Great Migration and left the South for Los Angeles, where he began dancing. And yet, despite all the history that shaped him, his journey – and legacy – represent only the beginning, as he continues to inspire new generations of dancers, choreographers and artists.

Edges of Ailey continues at the Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan) through February 9. The exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation and curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Curatorial Research Associate Joshua Lubin-Levy and Curatorial Assistants CJ Salapare and Katie Fong.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of dance performances. Check the Whitney website for dates and times.