Ailey Gives Audiences A Glimpse Of the Renowned Choreographer Who Infused Memory Into Movement
Jamila Wignot unpacks Alvin Ailey s legacy as it stands now and how his spirit and mark on the dance world continue to thrive today.
When
Ailey opens, the late Cicely Tyson comes into focus, standing glorious and regal on stage at the Kennedy Center for the Arts honoring the famed dancer and choreographer. Even then, at the tail end of his life, Alvin Ailey’s legacy both in the dance world and in the Black community was thunderous.
Though he was an honoree at the Kennedy Center Honors just 30 years after founding the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, not much was known about the reclusive dancer and choreographer’s personal life or past. Using his own words, never-before-seen interviews, archival footage, and accounts from those closest to him like Robert Battle, Carmen de Lavallade, and Judith Jamison, filmmaker Jamila Wignot unveils a figure for whom dancing and movement wa
Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
In the hot and sweaty summer of 1969, the well-known music festival known as Woodstock happened in Bethel, New York. Everyone knew its name. One hundred miles away, there was another festival occurring that same summer with a little more seasoning.and a little more soul. And it was free to attend!
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It was called the Harlem Cultural Festival, promoted and hosted by Tony Lawrence. It didn’t get even a taste of the mainstream press and basically faded into obscurity.until now. In his film directorial debut, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson took 50-year-old forgotten and almost-discarded footage of the concert series attended by over 300,000 people and provided a visual museum full of music, fashion and culture. Thus,
Jockey Could Finally Give Clifton Collins Jr. His Shot at Stardom
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Clifton Collins Jr. doesn’t believe in half measures.
For “Jockey,” an intimate drama about an aging rider, the actor shut himself off from friends and family to get in the mindset of his loner character. He needed to access the pain and emotional baggage of a man who is grappling with failing health, as well as the arrival of a younger racer (Moises Arias) who claims to be his son.
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“I cut myself off from the world,” Collins tells
Variety shortly before “Jockey” premiered to stellar reviews at this year’s Sundance. “I talked to three people the entire time I was gone. I like to go deep.”
Jessica Zack February 1, 2021Updated: February 1, 2021, 5:29 pm
Robin Wright directs and stars in “Land” (2021). Photo: Sundance Institute
The term “survival skills” takes on new meaning after watching Robin Wright’s impressive and quite moving Sundance Film Festival entry “Land,” in which she stars and also makes her feature directorial debut.
Wright who lived in the Bay Area for many years with her ex-husband Sean Penn and their two kids has made a spare and compassionate portrait of a woman, Edee, in the throes of unimaginable grief who moves to a remote cabin in the Wyoming wilderness to live in complete isolation. We don’t know at first what Edee is running from, what specific pain has extinguished her tolerance for other people and whether she’s fled to this run-down hunting cabin in Wyoming to let herself die or to find a way to survive.