Healing Cultural Trauma Through Dance as a Spiritual Practice- Homage to Alvin Ailey's "Blood Memories"
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Authors
Bowden, Mya
Issue Date
2024-05-01
Type
thesis_open
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Keywords
Alvin Ailey , Spiritual , Dance , African Dance , Horton , Lester Horton , Blood memories , Dance
Alternative Title
Dance Written
Abstract
This research aims to draw connections between dance and spirituality and how they are constantly in conversation with each other in performance or any other modes of physicality. The evaluation of Alvin Ailey’s dance work “Blood Memories” or Revelations is used as an example to support my research and is still performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre today. Alvin Ailey continued to create space for Black dancers while also finding a means to pay tribute to his ancestors by using dance to tell the tale of Black history. I include the connections that Alvin Ailey had with Lester Horton in order to identify Alvin Ailey’s key inspirations for creating such an iconic work that was used as a tool for healing and identifying cultural trauma. African spiritual and ritual dance history also play a key role in my research in order to identify the plethora of connections between dance and spirituality that have existed since the beginning of time.
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