Judith Jamison, an acclaimed dancer and choreographer who for two decades was artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, died on Saturday in New York, at the age of 81.
Her death came after a brief illness, according to a post on the company’s Instagram page.
Jamison grew up in Philadelphia and began dancing at the age of six, she said in a 2019 Ted talk. She joined Ailey’s modern dance company in 1965, when few Black women were prominent in American dance, and performed there for 15 years.
In 1971, she premiered Cry, a 17-minute solo that Ailey dedicated “to all Black women everywhere – especially our mothers”, and which became a signature of the company, according to its website.
Ailey said of Jamison in his 1995 autobiography that “with ‘Cry’ she became herself. Once she found this contact, this release, she poured her being into everybody who came to see her perform”.
Jamison performed on Broadway and formed her own dance company before returning to serve as artistic director for the Ailey troupe from 1989 to 2011.
“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,” she said in the Ted talk.
Jamison received a Kennedy Center honor, National Medal of Arts, and numerous other awards.
Mourning Jamison’s death, Michelle Obama wrote on X, “Judith Jamison was a true visionary in the world of dance.
From the American Ballet Theatre to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, she broke barriers and stirred souls with her grace and artistry.
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