www.clydefitchreport.com: As the only white dancer in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater circa 1969, my moniker was “Miss Scarlett.” Fresh from high school, I remember thinking it hilarious at the time. While touring Africa, the company played 12 countries, including Kenya, where there was a press conference at the embassy before opening night (you may remember this tale from a story that I wrote for the CFR last April). A reporter asked Ailey, “Do you want to be known as ‘Negro’ or ‘Black’?” I saw him struggle with frustration as he searched for an honest answer. Finally, he said, “I want to be called Alvin Ailey, the choreographer.” This began my lifelong fascination with the profound impact of identity on our deeper selves, whether it is personal or within society.
4 comments:
I've always been highly impressed with the type of work that comes out of the Alvin Ailey dance company, and this provides an interesting perspective as to how the inner workings and politics of the company align with the rest of the world in terms of identity. Alvin Ailey has always been a big company in terms of providing dancers of colors and people of other identities to exist in their art, and I think that has set a model for how people interpret identity in the modern entertainment scene. Half of what entertainers and artists do is market themselves, and choosing the identity you want to be known as, has a great effect on the longevity and the reputation of your career. I think that articles like these really help in furthering the discussion on identity politics and how it can be used for the better in our modern day and age.
I like the narrative this article creates. It goes through many stories of people’s lives and personal experiences. I really like the author’s personal story about growing up with labels on friends and as time progresses, these labels change. This notion of constant growth and evolution speaks about how our culture is constantly changing, and most of the time, for the better. I do not like how the end of this article gets a little bit political and highly opinionated, but the information is still relevant to the topic. In my high school english classes, the topic of nomination versus denomination was a major topic we discussed. We name things with our language thus altering how we interact with said things. Our culture is so stuck on this concept of naming, labeling, and pushing everything into boxes that sometimes we forget to take things at base value and just, especially when it comes to humans, accept people for being people and enjoy their presence.
While I really enjoyed the narrative about Alvin Ailey and identity I felt the rest of the article could have benefitted by being longer. Just as I got into the stories of the other individuals and their experiences with race, gender, and identity in general, I felt like I was ripped away and onto another individual. Each of their stories is so compelling and unique so it felt like a shame to see it compressed into the main points. Personally, I think it would have been stronger to allow the reader to get to know a few people well than many people only a little. Since it's about identity, it seems counterintuitive to strip these people down to the bare bones that allow them to make the point the author is trying to get across. Like Bianca said, our society is largely obsessed with associating a label with and boxing people into identities that they've created. However, I feel like the important thing to remember isn't that labels themselves are inherently good or bad but that others labeling you is bad. Labels can provide a sense of self and belonging for some but they have to come from the individual not the greater world.
This article raises an amazing question about the impact of the world from one’s self in a beautiful way. I love the story about how Alvin Aliey said that he wanted to be called a choreographer and not just known by the color of his skin. This article brings up a great point about terminology and about how sometimes people don’t even know how they are “supposed” to be classified by society without knowing it themselves. What it fails to mention is how people should identify themselves as they feel comfortable. I understand this story is from an outside perspective talking about times when the author had to change what she said in order to call someone the correct term but it is an important point. I really love the author’s inserts of Aidan’s quote first about how a name brings legitimacy to an issue as well as there are so many labels in this world and binaries that seem to be unnecessary.
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