Regular Price $29.99

Starring: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 
Directed By:
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Release Date: 1992
Studio: Kultur Video
Format: Classical,  Color,  DVD-Video,  NTSC, 

Editorial Reviews and DVD Information about A Tribute to Alvin Ailey

Amazon.com
Legendary choreographer Alvin Ailey is the subject of this well-balanced Tribute. Three of the four dances--"For Bird with Love", "Witness," and "Memoria"--are Ailey's, and the program concludes with Ulysses Dove's "Episodes." Each is eloquently introduced by Judith Jamison, and each demonstrates the joyous, affectionate atmosphere that Ailey's work always seemed to generate. "For Bird with Love," a dance interpretation of the life of seminal jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, is probably the best-known and best-loved of the items presented here. Ailey always relied on an element of rather camp Broadway glitz to carry his ideas beyond the hardcore audience for modern dance, and much of the work presented here is closer to Cats than to Cunningham. Overall, though, these dances are superbly structured, graceful edifices that transcend their showbiz influences, and there are few examples of the craft that are so extrovertly welcoming to the viewer. --Roger Thomas, Amazon.co.uk

Customer Reviews for A Tribute to Alvin Ailey

Great show.
I ordered the Alvin Ailey DVDs for overseas visitors who had enjoyed the performance in 2005, missed the December 2006 tour.A Tribute to Alvin Ailey

NO SUPRISE
It's no surprise that this DVD is good, because Ailey is always good. Ailey is better than good, damn near perfect.A Tribute to Alvin Ailey

Ailey and the Legacy
This was the first dance collection taped by the Ailey Company after Ailey's tragic death from AIDS in December 1989 and Judith Jamison's subsequent appointment as Artistic Director days later. It also contains one of the only taped performances available of a work Ailey created for a company other than his own, the solo "Witness," created in 1986 for the Royal Danish Ballet (the soloist here, Marilyn Banks, ironically now teaches dance in Denmark). This two-hour tape was actually presented with slightly different editing as two hour-long Dance in America presentations on PBS. April Berry is luminous as longtime Ailey friend Joyce Trisler (a role more closely identified with her Ailey predecessor Donna Wood) in "Memoria" (1979), and as tortured jazz great Charlie Parker, the late Gary DeLoatch gives a tour-de-force performance in "For Bird With Love." The real stars of this video, in my opinion, are the then-relative newcomers to the troupe, Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, featured in supporting roles as musicians close to Parker in "For Bird . . ." and in central roles in the late Ulysses Dove's "Episodes" (1991). Desmond Richardson says more with just his right arm in either ballet than some novelists can write in 300 pages.

The only drawback to this particular tape, I feel, is that Jamison's comments about each piece could have been more tightly edited, but that's what fast-forward buttons are for. Enjoy the dance!A Tribute to Alvin Ailey

Tribute to honesty
Alvin Ailey was a member of Anna's (Sokolow) theatre Dance Company in 1956, Two years before he has founded is company, others memberes in the same 1956's company where : Eve Beck, Judith Coy, Jeff Duncan, David Gold, Jack Moore, Sandra Pine, Paul Sansardo, Beatrice Seckler and Annelies Widman. The person who edited this DVD thought that this fact is not important in Alvin Ailey's Biography. In my opinion it is important.A Tribute to Alvin Ailey