Alvin Ailey grew up in Texas, the son of a sharecropper, and discovered dance as a teenager in Los Angeles. He founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York in 1958 with a group of Black dancers. His 1960 work 'Revelations' — built on Black American spirituals — became one of the most performed works in dance history. Ailey died in 1989 at 58 of a blood disorder his doctor attributed to AIDS. He'd told the doctor to say it was a blood disease to spare his mother.
January 5, 1931
95 years ago
What Else Happened on January 5
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