Alvin Ailey link to Black Theology

Dance
Alvin Ailey Dance Company is a renowned predominately black dance company in New York. They recently celebrated their 50th year anniversary with a collection of dances expressed religious ideas in the time of segregation between blacks and white. If one would watch them perform, they could see the idea of their religion and their goals in life, religiously. Through every movement of every part of their body, one can go back to black theology for support of the movements. Watching them perform and reading the article on black theology brought me to a conclusion about the connection between the two. Dance posses as a key component in describing and understand the beliefs of African Americans through Black theology.
James H. Cone expresses that all theology is socially located, in other words theology is like a map to find the origin of a specific theology (40). He also states that African American Theology, because of its social location, is closer to the gospel than white theology (47). Black theology veers more toward a liberating theology due to their times in slavery. I feel that the focus of black theology is not towards questioning the existence of God, but towards how God can save us and how he will bring us to salvation. All those feelings can be easily expressed through African American dance, specifically through the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.
In one of many performances, called “Pilgrim of Sorrow”, the dancers are dressed in shades of brown that match their skin tone. Half way through the song changes to “Fix Me Jesus” and the dancer number drops from five to two, a man and a woman. From the beginning of the dance, stress is expressed across the woman’s face as though to show the beginning stages of the “black people’s struggle for liberation (Cone 54).”Throughout her own performance, the man is behind her mimicking and also acting as a support system as to signify the dependence on God. Furthermore the moves of both dancers tell a story, which is the definition of black theology, of the struggle. For example, there is a point where the woman has arms arched up like the way we used to draw birds, in the shape of an “m”. Her left knee is about to touch the floor while her right is not; the man sees her and runs to her giving out his hand. He brings her to standing position then with her, looks into the distance as is to show the audience that salvation is in reach. I feel like the man dancer is symbolic for describing God’s support and how he is always there for you. Another aspect to describe the part of the dancers looking out into the distance is that they see “the gospel train coming”, in other words the train is an “eschatological train, the train of salvation and society (Cone 56).” They are waiting for the train to come and carry them home to Jesus.
However, there were those who went against “the power to endure in struggle and the patience to remain calm when surrounded by inexplicable evil”, therefore did not get on that train to salvation (Cone 57). This was expressed in the Alvin Ailey dance called “Sinner Man”, which consisted of three man who each one by one ran out on stage while the words, “aww sinner man, where you gonna run too” were sung in the background. After all three have come on stage two leave and one runs to the corner of the stage while the words “run to the rock, rock wont you hide me?”, are repeated over and over. Same goes for the second who comes on stage while the first one leaves, except the words song are “run to the sea, sea wont you hide me?” The connection between those two is that in response the music express that God will overtake whatever is hiding the sinner, re-emphasizes fact of god being the All-powerful. Furthermore, when the third man comes out for his solo dance the words ‘run to the Lord, Lord wont you hide me?”, are sung, but the interesting part of this solo is that the reply is “you should have been praying”. That answer reinforces the dependability black have on Jesus, they do not question, they are to look to Jesus when they are scared and confess their sins, not try and hide.
The overall theme of the Alvin Ailey revelations dance performance appeared to be in pursuit of salvation. Each dance depicted a way to achieve salvation or in other cases be denied salvation. They also in the process depicted the struggle and pain through their movements and facial expressions until they reached that “train to salvation”. All in all, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations dance performance perfectly depicted the beliefs of black theology.