Judith Jamison: Proud to Wear Ailey Mantle

“One of the most essential qualities of the Ailey company,” says Judith Jamison, the new director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Center, is the way it “nurtured (the dancers’) individuality, so I’m not about to drop my individuality as Judy Jamison to step into those shoes.”

Named Wednesday to head the company, she says she will only continue working with her own company, the Jamison Project, through June, when she will “take some of my dancers--and some of my repertory--and merge them into the Ailey.” Jamison pledges she will soon put her own imprint on the Ailey company.

“I will have a slightly different sensibility just in the fact that the Jamison Project, which is a repertory company, brought in many innovative choreographers on the cutting edge. The company will still remain predominately black and will still maintain the traditional works that it’s famous for--’Revelations,’ ‘Cry,’ ‘Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder’--but there will be a breath of fresh air brought into it.

“The legacy will continue,” she says. ‘I think the sense of perspective I have simply speaks to enlarging what Mr. Ailey had already started, so that will incorporate those choreographers that he has used plus new ones, such as Garth Fagan.”

For nearly 25 years, Alvin Ailey was Jamison’s “spiritual walker, my mentor and support.” Ever since she first began dancing for Ailey following a chance meeting at a fruitless television audition in 1964, the 45-year-old dancer has been hailed as one of the central stars in the Ailey universe. With works like “Cry,” Ailey turned the dancer he once called a “tall, gangly girl with no hair” into a vehicle for expressing the very exuberance, humor, and soul of his company’s African-American heritage.

At Ailey’s encouragement, Jamison choreographed her first dance (“Divining”) for his company in 1984, and after creating additional works for Maurice Bejart, the Washington Ballet, and Jennifer Muller/The Works, in 1988, she took the giant step of creating her own company, the Jamison Project, which is based in Philadelphia.

At the moment, Jamison simply seems focused on the struggle to stay ahead of it all. Her struggle will be to incorporate two companies as well as teaching positions in two different cities (Philadelphia and Detroit).

“It’s going to take time,” she says, “but I think all things are possible. I will be bouncing back and forth between both companies, calling from airports screaming, ‘Where am I supposed to be now?’ I can’t be Alvin Ailey, but I think I’m pretty forceful and dynamic, except I’m Judy Jamison.”