“Dancing is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that….You’re dancing spirit.” – Judith Jamison (May 1943 – November 2024)
Devoted dance enthusiasts can picture it in mind’s eye: Judith Jamison turning, reaching, pouring her soul out, a long white skirt adding an entrancing dimensionality to it all. Cry (1971), this solo which Alvin Ailey set on her and made to honor all Black women, arguably put her on the map as a uniquely gifted performer – but the journey certainly didn’t end there.
The acclaimed performer, choreographer, artistic director and changemaker passed away on November 9, 2024, at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center (Manhattan, NYC), at 81 years old. Dance corners of social media soon filled with testaments to her talent, courage and humanity.
If we look even deeper than Instagram posts, we can see in this unparalleled woman both gravitas and grounding, both self-assurance and admirable humility. Her life and work offered art and leadership that can continue to help guide us – and also a model of how to live with hope, heart and integrity…in dance and far beyond it.
The path to stardom
Jamison discovered a love for dance at the tender age of six, beginning classes at the Judimar School of Dance in her hometown of Philadelphia. Although some encouraged her to instead study classical music, she continued training – even under Katherine Dunham at one point, notes Stacy M. Brown for The New Pittsburgh Courier. She was enrolled at Fisk University for a brief time, but then transferred to the Philadelphia Dance Academy in order to focus on dance and kinesiology.
Jamison auditioned for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company, which was then only seven years old, in 1965. “I didn’t know what I was doing here, I had no idea. I just knew I was in New York and that this man saw me fail an audition…and I ended up with an invite three days later, asking if I wanted to join the company,” Jamison said (via ABC7 News). Clearly, Ailey saw something in her – maybe something that she didn’t yet see in herself.
She earned her place as a respected member of the company’s ranks before long, performing iconic repertory works including Revelations. The 16-minute Cry is what truly made her a household name, however, spotlighting her as a singularly masterful. “With Cry, she became herself,” Ailey later affirmed. “Once she found this contact, this release, she poured her being into everybody who came to see her perform” (via the New Pittsburgh Courier).
Making a mark on dance and beyond
Jamison’s performance talents soon resonated far beyond the Ailey company; she performed with numerous companies across the globe, including San Francisco Ballet, Swedish Royal Ballet and Vienna State Ballet. She even graced the Broadway stage on one occasion, dancing with Gregory Hines in Sophisticated Ladies (1981). Her choreographic career began with Divining (1984) and subsequently her founding The Jamison Project Dance Company (1988). Her choreographic works remain a key part of the Ailey repertory.
1989 brought Alvin Ailey’s passing, and Jamison stepping into his role as Artistic Director. Her tenure as Artistic Director brought significant steps for the company’s growth and stability, notes Brown for The New Pittsburgh Courier: including its first permanent home in the Joan Weill Center for Dance, as well as a partnership with Fordham University to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts program focused on multicultural dance.
“I felt prepared to carry [the company] forward. Alvin and I were like parts of the same tree. He, the roots and the trunk, and we were the branches. I was his muse. We were all his muses,” Jamison said of carrying forward Ailey’s work — the work to entertain, uplift and educate.
Indeed, she brought the grace of the muse into the studio, inspiring dancers to find beauty in the smallest raise of an arm or shift of gaze. She had “the capacity to evoke a thousand different emotions in the elegant undulations of a simple gesture,” says Robin Givhan for The Washington Post. “As she’d coach a dancer through a role, her long arms would extend toward the ends of the earth and they would become as liquid as waves in the ocean…..And they could tell a story of fortitude, strength and beauty that felt universal but also deeply intimate.”
Clearly, Jamison exuded so much grandiosity – but also extended something quite warm and intimate. An Exhibit A of the latter: current Ailey Rehearsal Director Ronni Favors shares how she first met Jamison when she “ran offstage and she said ‘brava!’…and that was my introduction to Jamison,” (via ABC7 News). Jamison knew how to lift others up as she climbed, as the saying goes.
Her achievements didn’t go unnoticed; honors bestowed upon her include the National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honor, “recognizing her contribution to the arts and her role in broadening the visibility of Black dancers and choreographers,” (New Pittsburgh Courier). Even after she retired in 2011, she remained a guiding light for the company as Artistic Director Emerita. Her autobiography Dancing Spirit shares her story of rising to this esteemed position.
Jamison once shared that she wasn’t fully comfortable with the attention that comes with such accolades. “I still got to go down the hallway and do my laundry. ‘This legend,’…still hard to get a taxi. I’m just the regular person that has this God-given talent that brought me over,” (via ABC7 News).
The legacy that endures
They say that people will remember how you make them feel – and Jamison seems to have truly left her mark on the hearts and souls of those with whom she worked. The mood was “heavy” at Ailey headquarters on the Monday after her passing, notes ABC7 News. “Yet there was also a sense of gratitude among dancers and leadership, knowing they crossed paths with greatness.”
“She could hold the audience in the palm of her hands with her words, not only her movement but just with an eye movement or a pithy remark,” noted Favors – underscoring the multitudes of gravitas and grounding that she exuded. She also knew “what it meant to find joy in the darkness,” and reminded audiences of that, affirmed Givhan for The Washington Post. She could hold space for both, and inspire us to do the same. She believed that we could, too, trusting “in our continued capacity – and need – to feel deeply and honestly.”
Amidst all the fame and honors, yes, Jamison still did her laundry and struggled to hail cabs like the rest of us. Her work and life gifted us with “a poignant reminder that the most valiant quotidian struggle sometimes comes down to simply moving through each day with grace,” argues Givhan. In so doing, “Jamison let her audience know what it meant to be human in breathtaking, inspiring and improbable ways.”
By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.
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