Ailey Quotes

I'm going to spend every night of my life kissing away your memories of him. I'm going to find places he never kissed and our first times will be a thousand times sweeter than your first times with him. Isabel you are the love of my life. -Alex Ailey

All my life I've been fascinated by the precipice in all of us. When you come to it, you either choose to fall or you don’t --Alvin Ailey

There was still no likelihood that we could make a living from dance. We were doing it because we loved it... We realized how full we felt; we were surrounded by music and dancing and joy.

To be who you are and become what you are capable of is the only goal worth living.

boy—before intense anxiety had crushed his chances for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and sent him into the awful mental decline in which he’d been made a vampire.

Several years before Maya [Angelou] went home to heaven, she penned the poem popularly known as 'When Great Trees Fall,' but properly titled 'Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield,' a lyrical ode she ends this way: And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly.... Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. Her sentiments, so often repeated, powerfully sum up what loss does to the human heart, how it lowers our heads and deepens our sorrows, and yet how, in the end, it miraculously restores us. When great trees fall, we weep in unity with the forest--and we rejoice at the legacy that lingers.

Garip şey, derdin ne olursa olsun erkekler sana dişlerini muayene ettir der, kadınlar da evlen der. Hayatında hiçbir şeyi başaramamış bir adam kalkar sana işini nasıl yöneteceğini anlatır. Bir çift çorabı olmayan üniversite profesörlerinin on yılda nasıl milyoner olunacağını ve ömründe bir koca bulamamış bir kadının aileye nasıl bakılacağını anlatmasına benzer bu.

I try to be as kind to poetry as I can... the expectation of the poem is much higher. People really expect to read seven lines, and walk away from that better. They want to be healed. People really think, "Oh, here's a poem, OK, let's see what you gonna do. Fix me." You don't go watch Alvin Ailey thinking "fix me." You don't go to the museum thinking "give me wisdom.

When we come to these all-white spaces, we have to be tough. We can’t show any weakness. I know that’s difficult, but that’s the way it is, and that’s why I’m so hard on you. And I will continue to be hard on you, Ailey, because I want to prepare you for what’s coming. It’s gone be the Thrilla in Manila when you enter the doctoral program. They will throw everything they have at you. If you fail, they’ll say, oh, that’s too bad. You just weren’t smart enough. If you succeed and earn the degree, despite all the obstacles they put up, they’ll take credit for your success and congratulate themselves for fostering a nonprejudiced environment. But, Ailey, you aren’t going to fail, because I am going to help you with every ounce of power that I have, all while pretending that I’m not helping you. For example, you and I never had this conversation. Do you understand

The history of slavery provides the spine of this novel. Some texts that offered “deep background” were Boubacar Barry’s Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, which excavates eighteenth-century slave trading history in Wolof-speaking areas of West Africa, and Walter Rucker’s Gold Coast Diasporas: Identity, Culture, and Power, about Asante peoples of West Africa, those who would come to be called “Coromantee.” Sylviane Diouf’s Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas is a must-read for anyone interested in Muslim history on the American side of the Atlantic. And Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History gives background information about the brutal transatlantic slave trade. In addition, the digitized Georgia Archives provided information about eighteenth-century slave and Native American codes, as well as Land Lottery records. Henry Louis Gates’s edited The Classic Slave Narratives, which include Jacobs’s as well as Frederick Douglass’s autobiographies, continue to be so important to me. Ailey’s family lives

He rolled her on the bed and turned so he could look at her. ‘Are you hurt?’ His stomach lurched in the seconds it took her to answer. ‘I’m happy.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him shyly. ‘I’m glad for this. I’m glad that it was you.’ Her tiger’s eyes glowed in vibrant gold and green. A surge of possessiveness clawed at him, like talons around his heart. He had wild thoughts about taking her with him. They could keep on running, accountable to no one but each other. She’d never have to marry a man she didn’t want. But that was what his life had always been. Ailey needed more. She needed honour, tradition and family. Yet she’d chosen him. She’d given herself without reservation. The knowledge stunned him. It made him believe that he could be more. He kissed her. It was the only way to stop thinking. He was never a thinking man anyway. He kissed her again, then released her lips to move his mouth over her breast, sliding his tongue over her nipple, sucking gently until he could feel her squirm beneath him. He ran his hands over her satiny skin until her breath caught and she whispered his name, her breath fanning soft against his ear. He had never gone hard so quickly. When he entered her moments later, she closed around him and he moved within her, lifting and lowering as he waited for the dark pleasure to overcome him. But it wouldn’t. Not completely. Through the slick heat and the unbelievable tightness gripping him, Ailey was there. When he shut his eyes, he saw her face. Mine, he thought as the blood rushed through his skull. For as long as she would have him. To the ends of the earth if she needed him there.

What else do you want to know?’ he asked. Possessed by morbid curiosity, her eyes darted to the scar that cut just over his ear. She’d found it shortly after they met, while he lay unconscious in the grass. He didn’t need to ask what had caught her attention. ‘I got that in a fight against imperial soldiers. Ask me why.’ She shook her head, unable to bring herself to do it. The cocoon of warmth that had enveloped the entire afternoon unwound itself in an instant. ‘Are you having second thoughts about being here with me?’ He planted a hand into the grass, edging closer. ‘No. I trust you.’ He was giving her all the time in the world to shove him away, to rise, to flee. Her heartbeat quickened as she watched him. Moving ever so slowly, he braced an arm on either side of her, his fingers sinking into the moss. ‘I asked you to come with me.’ Despite her words, she dug her heels into the ground and inched backwards. ‘I feel safe with you.’ ‘I can see that.’ He affected a lazy smile as she retreated until her back pressed against the knotted roots that crawled along the ground. His boldness was so unexpected, so exciting. She held her breath and waited. Her pulse jumped when he reached for her. She’d been imagining this moment ever since their first duel and wondering whether it would take another swordfight for him to come near her again. His fingers curled gently against the back of her neck, giving her one last chance to escape. Then he lowered his mouth and kissed her. It was as natural as breathing to wrap his arms around her and lower her to the ground. He settled his weight against her hips. The perfume of her skin mixed with the damp scent of the moss beneath them. At some point, her sense of propriety would win over. Until then he let his body flood with raw desire. It felt good to kiss her the way he wanted to. It felt damn good. He slipped his tongue past her lips to where she was warm and smooth and inviting. Her hands clutched at his shirt as she returned his kiss. A muted sound escaped from her throat. He swallowed her cry, using his hands to circle her wrists: rough enough to make her breath catch, gentle enough to have her opening her knees, cradling his hips with her long legs. He stroked himself against her, already hard beyond belief. He groaned when she responded, instinctively pressing closer. ‘I need to see you,’ he said. The sash around her waist fell aside in two urgent tugs while his other hand stole beneath her tunic. She gasped when his fingers brushed the swath of cloth at her breasts. The faint, helpless sound nearly lifted him out of the haze of desire. He didn’t want to think too hard about this. Not yet. He felt for the edge of the binding. ‘In back.’ She spoke in barely a whisper, a sigh on his soul. She peered up at him, her face in shadow as he parted her tunic. She watched him in much the same way she had when they had first met: curious, fearless, her eyes a swirl of green and gold. He pulled at the tight cloth until Ailey’s warm, feminine flesh swelled into his hands. He soothed his palms over the cruel welts left by the bindings. She bit down against her lip as blood rushed back into the tortured flesh. With great care, he stroked her nipples, teasing them until they grew tight beneath his roughened fingertips. God’s breath. Perfect. He wanted his mouth on her and still it wouldn’t be enough. Her heart beat out a chaotic rhythm. His own echoed the same restless pulse. ‘I knew it would be like this.’ His words came out hoarse with passion. At that moment he’d have given his soul to have her. But somewhere in his thick skull, he knew he had a beautiful, vulnerable girl who trusted him pressed against the bare earth. He sensed the hitch in her breathing and how her fingers dug nervously into his shoulders, even as her hips arched into him. He ran his thumb gently over the reddened mark that ran just below her collarbone and felt her shiver beneath him.

Before she knew what was happening, she was leaning towards him. Ryam stiffened as she pressed her lips to his. His mouth was warm and inviting. She only tasted him for a second before his hands jerked to her shoulders to hold her away. Undaunted, she grasped at the neck of his tunic while she kissed him, brushing over his lips again, searching, pleading. Slowly, his grip loosened. He yielded with a groan, sliding his tongue past her lips to feed on her desire. She wrapped her arms around him, barely able to circle the broadness of his shoulders. A soft, aching sound rose from her throat as his fingers dug into the nape of her neck, tilting her to him, fitting their mouths together even more intimately. She clung to him, guided by nothing but the desperate beating of her heart and a sharp, sweet yearning deep within her. His hands moved restlessly to grasp her hips, but then he tore himself away from her so abruptly she made a startled sound. He gritted his teeth and turned away, his hands clenched into fists. His pulse skipped along his neck as he gulped in breath after ragged breath. ‘You can’t kiss me like that,’ he growled. ‘You can’t look at me like that.’ Ailey was staring at him. Her fingers lifted to press against lips swollen with want and sensation. Naked desire. He could see it in her eyes, smell it on her skin. She was flushed with it, overflowing. God, the silken taste of her. She didn’t know how to hide her feelings and they clawed at him until the ache between his legs reached an acute peak. ‘What do you want from me?’ he demanded. One moment she made him swear not to touch her and the next she was kissing him into madness. If she made a single move towards him, made a single sweet sound he’d take hold of her, lower her to the ground and make her his right now with the fierce throb of combat and their wild escape still in his veins. Some part of her must have known it. That was why she stayed petrified, her only movement the rise and fall of her breasts as she struggled to breathe. ‘Tell me what it is you want from me and it’s yours,’ he promised dangerously.

There’s a reason why Black women my age can recite lines from The Color Purple at will. The film is iconic because it dared, following Alice Walker’s lead, to suggest to America that Black women were the heroes and not the villains of the American national story. It dared to suggest to a watching world that the baggage we carry is not of our own stitching. And while we Black girls always recite these lines to each other in a humorous context, it is mostly humorous because just underneath the surface, the truth of what we say in jest leaps at us with the clarity of an Alvin Ailey performance.

komşum iyi bir tip ama fena halde kafamı karıştırıyor: her sabah erkenden kalkıp işine gidiyor; karısı çalışıyor, çok güzel iki çocukları var; akşamları evinde, bazen çocuklarını görürüm, karısı zaman zaman görünüp kaybolur; saat dokuz oldu mu evin ışıkları söner; ve bu şekilde geçiyor bütün günleri; oldukça zeki birine benziyor, otuz yaşlarında; bu rutinin tek izahı işini sevmesi ve tanrı, seks ve aileye inanıyor olması. nedenini bilemiyorum ama sürekli orada birden bir pencere camının kırılmasını bekliyorum sanki, birinin bağırmasını, küfretmesini, sabahın üçünde ışıkların yandığını ve şişelerin havada uçtuğunu görmeyi, ama beş yıldır rutininde hiçbir değişiklik olmadı bu yüzden de bu farklı şeyleri onun için ben yapıyorum ama karısının hoşnut olduğunu hiç sanmıyorum: "Hank, birçok kez polis çağırabilirdim ama çağırmadım." bazen ben polis çağırıp onlardan şikayetçi olmayı düşünüyorum ama polisler şikayetime gülerler herhalde; kırmızı ışık yanıp sönüyor, lacivertlerin içinde beyaz yüzler: "Efendim, onların yaptıkları yasalara aykırı değil...

I’ll give you that the great scholar wasn’t looking out for all in our communities. I’ll even give you that Booker T. Washington succeeded in doing just as much as Dr. Du Bois for the race, albeit in his own crude way, but David, you’ve got to admit that what Dr. Du Bois meant is everyone is not meant to be a leader of the race. Some folks bring us down, like that knucklehead Ailey brought to the picnic that time. What was his name?

But would they respect me here, if all I do is stick underneath the only Black professor in the program?” On the other end, Dr. Oludara heaved a sigh. “Ailey, why are you making things harder than they have to be?” “I’m not. It’s just—” “Ailey. Let me ask you something. Do any of your classmates invite you to their study sessions?” “No, ma’am.” “Are they even friendly to you?” “I mean . . . no. Not really.” “Then why do you give a good goddamn about what they think? You could have nothing but white folks on your dissertation committee, and your classmates still would have something to say. I’m sure they’ve passed around that you’re there on a quota. They love to accuse Black folks of taking their place. Even when it ain’t but one of us, and fifty of them, they don’t even want us to have that one spot.

Hacettepe Üniversitesi öğretim üyelerinden Perihan (Oray) Yunt,        Konya yöresinde köy kadınlarıyla yaptığı anket çalışmasında ortaya        çıkan bir iletişim sorununu aşağıda dile getiriyor:               --1970 yılında, Konya yöresinin GEZİCİ KADIN KURSU'nun etkinlik        gösterdiği köylerinde ve böyle bir kursun hiç uğramadığı yerlerde,        sosyal yaşamda farklılıklar olup olmadığı konusunda bir ön        araştırma yapıyorduk. Anketimizde --Kaç günde bir yıkanırsın?-- diye        bir soru da yer almıştı. Anket sadece kadınlara uygulanmaktaydı.        Kursun yapıldığı ve yapılmadığı yedişer köy alarak toplam on dört        köyde, örnekleme yoluyla seçtiğimiz bir grup köy kadınına sorular        soruyorduk. En son köyde, kadınlardan birisi beni, oldukça fakir bir        aileye ait olduğu anlaşılan, tahta basamakları kırık dökük bir eve        götürdü. Evin kadınının yüzü mutsuzluk izleri taşıyordu. Anketimizdeki        soruyu bu kadına da sordum: --Kaç günde bir yıkanırsınız?-- Kadın        cevap vermedi, anlamsızca yüzüme baktı. Bana kılavuzluk eden        kadın hemen atıldı ve acımalı bir sesle, --Gocası sakattır, ayda bir yıkansa        ne nimet,-- dedi. O anda kafamda şimşek çaktı ve ancak o zaman,        bu soruyu sorduğumda öteki kadınların biraz mahçup, yarı        mütebessim verdikleri --Haftada bir gün, haftada iki, üç gün,-- gibi        cevapların anlamını farkettim. Ayrıca, uğradığımız köyleri, bizden        önce, doğum kontrolüne ilişkin araştırma yapan bir ekibin dolaşmış        olduğunu da sonradan öğrendim. Aradan bir süre geçti. Olayı, Konyalı        bir arkadaşıma anlattım. Arkadaşım, --O biçimde değil, 'Çoluk        çocuk kaç günde bir yıkanır, çamaşır yıkarsınız?' diye sormanız gerekirdi,--        dedi» (Yunt, 1978).

Aside from being famous, what do Beethoven, Mark Rothko, Hemingway, Francis Ford Coppola, Van Gogh, Alvin Ailey, Robin Williams, Sylvia Plath, Balzac, Jackson Pollock, Edgar Allan Poe, Axl Rose, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf have in common? They all suffered from some form of mental illness. Even

Ama Avrupa, özgürlüğe kavuşabilmek için harcadığı çabalarda ciddi bir hesap yanlışlığı yaptı. İnsandaki dirimsel işlevin yokedilmesinin binlerce yıldır canavarlaştırdığı ruhsal (zihinsel) yapıyı hesaba katmadı; insanların iliğine kemiğine işlemiş genel kusuru, kişilik sinircesini gözönünde bulundurmadı. Bu yüzden o korkunç ruhsal veba, yani insan kişiliğindeki akıldışı yanın olaylara egemen olması tek kişinin buyurgan yönetimi biçimınde patlak verdi. O güne dek iyi aile eğitimi kılığı altında, yüzeysel bir kendine egemen olmayla dizginlenen güçler, özgürlük uğrunda savaşan yığınların elinde, eylem içerisinde kendilerine bir yol açtılar; ve bir de baktık toplama kampları, Yahudi kovalamacası, insan iffetliliğinin toz olup gitmesi, spor diye suçsuz insanları tarayan eziyetçi canavarların halkları kırıp geçirmesi ve ancak kaz adımıyla yürürken insanca yaşama duygusunun kalıntılarını hissedebilen robotlar kaplamış ortalığı; Devlet'in sözümona halkın çıkarlarını temsil ettiğini öne sürdüğü yerlerde yığınların amansız kandırılışı, kimseden yardım istemeksizin, tam bir yasaya bağlılıkla bir düşünceye hizmet ettiklerine inanan on binlerce gencin harcanması; ufacık bir bölümü yeryüzündeki yoksulluğu yoketmeye yetecek korkunç bir hazinenin, insan emeğinin çarçur edilmesi; sözün kısası, bilgiyi ve emeği ellerinde tutanların hem kendi içlerinden, hem de dışlarındaki dünyadan, insan denen varlıkların kişilik kapısı üzerinde serpilip gelişen ve adına «siyaset» denen toplu sinir hastalığını söküp atamamaları halinde, günün birinde yeniden yaşanabilecek bir toplu çılgınlık nöbeti. .......Freud'la yukarıda andığım tartışmaları yaptıgım yıllarda, 1928-1930 arasında, buyurgan yönetim (faşizm) konusunda en küçük bir düşüncem yoktu. 1930-1933 arasında Almanya'da tanıdım onu. İlk karşılaştığımda ne edeceğimi şaşırdım, hele şurasında burasında, bölük pörçük, Freud'la tartıştığımız konuyu bulunca, ağzım açık kaldı. Yavaş yavaş buyurgan yönetimin mantığını kavradım. Tartışmalarımız insanın ruhsal yapısının değerlendirilmesi, insanların mutluluk özleminin oynadığı rol ve toplumsal yaşamda akıldışı davranış ve düşüncenin payı konusundaydı. Buyurgan yönetimde, toplumun ruhsal hastalığı açık seçik ortaya çıktı. ..... Buyurgan yönetim halkı büyük bir coşkuyla "aile"nin, "devlet"in ve "ulus"un aynı şey olduğuna inandırdığı için, halkın aile yapısı kolayca buyurgan ulusal yapıya uzatılabilirdi. Gerçi bu, gerçek ailenin sorunlarından ya da ulusun gerçek gereksinimlerinden bir tekine bile çözüm getirmiyordu, ama halk yığınlarının saplantılı aile içersindeki bağlarını "ulus" adı verilen çok daha geniş aileye aktarmalarına izin veriyordu." sy.211

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson later said that there should be a “consilience” between art and science. 79 Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison took selected images with her on her first trip to space, including a poster of dancer and former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Judith Jamison performing the dance Cry, and a Bundu statue from Sierra Leone, because, as she said, “the creativity that allowed us . . . to conceive and build and launch the space shuttle, springs from the same source as the imagination and analysis it took to carve a Bundu statue, or the ingenuity it took to design, choreograph, and stage ‘Cry.’ . . . That’s what we have to reconcile in our minds, how these things fit together.” 80 As a jazz musician once told me, musicians are mathematicians as well as artists. Morse’s story suggests that the argument started not because of the need to bring art and science together, but because they were once not so far apart. 81 When Frank Jewett Mather Jr. of The Nation stated that Morse “was an inventor superimposed upon an artist,” it was factually true. 82 Equally true is that Morse could become an inventor because he was an artist all the while. In one of the final paintings that laid him flat, the painting that failed to secure his last attempt at a commission, one he had worked fifteen years to achieve, Morse may have left a clue about his shift from art to invention, and the fact that the skills required for both are the same. He painted The House of Representatives (1822–23) as evidence of his suitability for a commission from Congress to complete a suite of paintings that still adorn the U.S. Capitol building. The painting has an odd compositional focus. In the center is a man screwing in an oil chandelier, preoccupied with currents. Morse was “rejected beyond hope of appeal” by the congressional commission led by John Quincy Adams. When he toured the picture for seven weeks—displayed in a coffee house in Salem, Massachusetts, and at exhibitions in New York, Boston, Middleton, and Hartford, Connecticut—it lost twenty dollars in the first two weeks. Compounded by a litany of embarrassing, near-soul-stealing artistic failures, he took to his bed for weeks, “more seriously depressed than ever.” This final rejection forced him to shift his energies to his telegraph invention. 83 By 1844 Morse went to the Capitol focused on a current that would occupy the work of Congress—obtaining a patent for the telegraph.

Ben tek başına düşünen bir insanım, dar anlamıyla hiç bir zaman bütün yüreğimle ne devlete bağlı kalmışımdır, ne ana yurda, ne dostlar çevresine, ne de aileye.

He was destined to die lying in the dust with a knife in his ribs anyway. A pointless death. He’d always known it. Ailey was the only one who had ever asked for him to be anything more.

Yeni gelenlere karşı alakaları gayet kısa sürer. Düşük başlar hafif kalkar, büyük kapıya doğru hafifçe eğilir ve tekrar eski vaziyetine döner; herkes kendi üstünde toplanan dikkatini başkasına pek az ayırır, hem de onlar ilk gördüklerini bile eskiden tanıyorlarmış gibidirler, aralarında kandan fazla akrabalık vardır; acının ve korkunun birleştirdiği müşterek bir manevi aileye mensup olduklarını hissederler, emindirler ki insanlar arasında sabretmesini, beklemesini en iyi onlar bilir.

His movements became more aggressive. He pushed forwards. Attack and retreat. She responded, her movements complementing his, the ebb and flow of her breathing increasing with the rhythm. He could hear the soft pad of her footsteps against the ground. A dance in the darkness. It would be that way if they made love. Completely attuned to each other’s bodies through simple touch and tension. He sensed it in his soul as heat and energy pumped through his veins. He stopped abruptly and let go of her, reaching up to remove the blindfold. Ailey came back into view. She blinked at him. ‘Why are you stopping?’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Do you even know what you do to me?’ She could entice him to madness without even trying. With a combat exercise, of all things. Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off of her. And when he gave in to his need, he wouldn’t know how to let go.

Lesbianism and male homosexuality also appear to be quite different: Male sexual orientation tends to appear early in development, whereas female sexuality appears to be more flexible or fluid over the lifespan (B aumeister, 2000). Future theories should attend to the large individual differences within those currently classified as lesbian and gay. For example, mate preferences vary across lesbians who describe themselves as “butch” as opposed to “femme” (B ailey et al., 1997; B assett, Pearcey, & Dabbs, 2001). Butch lesbians tend to be more masculine, dominant, and assertive, whereas femme lesbians tend to be more sensitive, cheerful, and feminine. The differences are more than merely psychological; butch lesbians, compared to their femme peers, have higher levels of circulating testosterone, more masculine waist-to-hip ratios, more permissive attitudes toward casual sex, and less desire to have children (S ingh, Vidaurri, Zambarano, & Dabbs, 1999). Femme lesbians place greater importance than butch lesbians on financial resources in a potential romantic partner and experience sexual jealousy over rivals who are more physically attractive. Butch lesbians place less value on financial resources when seeking partners but experience greater jealousy over rival competitors who are more financially successful. The psychological, morphological, and hormonal correlates imply that butch and femme are not merely arbitrary labels but rather reflect genuine individual differences.

Ailey grins like she doesn't know the entire story from start to finish.

Ailey's entire face lights up as I flip the page to a drawing of Zahra.

Ailey's eyes slowly drift shut much sooner than I expected.

I give Ailey a kiss on the top of her head before shutting off her bedside lamp and leaving her room.

And then you go to college and some teacher says to you, “Hey, why don’t you go to Alvin Ailey and go dance.” Madonna: No, he said, “You’re too good for this. You don’t need this. This is an environment for people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives. Go. Go to New York.

inchoate