Dudley Williams: love songs to Alvin.

Dudley Williams recalls how his life and career were shaped by Alvin Ailey and his company, which begins its New York City season this month at City Center.

Imagine for a moment being a witness to the American dance scene during the mid to late 1950s, a period of modern choreographic renaissance and innovations that are leading us into the twenty-first century: In 1957 George Balanchine choreographed Agon, pairing Arthur Mitchell with Diana Adams in a controversial and erotic interracial duet; in 1958 Martha Graham starred in the first full-length modem dance blockbuster, Clytemnestra, and premiered Embattled Garden; and Alvin Ailey created Blues Suite, his first dance masterpiece, in which he juxtaposed his knowledge of modem dance giant Lester Horton with his experience with jazz and theater dance legend Jack Cole. Other significant works of the period included Anna Sokolow's Rooms (1955), a revolutionary mixed-cast dance of urban angst, and Donald McKayle's extraordinary Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder (1959), starring Mary Hinkson.

"I saw all of that," says Dudley Williams, a 1997 recipient of the Dance Magazine Award for his commitment and contribution to twentieth-century modern dance. He eventually danced in all of the pieces except Agon. "I was there then, an it is amazing a till here today, kicking and spinning. It was fabulous." No wonder Williams, who turns sixty next August, continually speaks about how rich he is--rich with knowledge, education, and firsthand wisdom that he generously imparts to the next generation of dancers as his own mentor, Alvin Ailey, had done.

A native New Yorker, Williams grew up in the East River projects ("the melting pot of everything"). His first foray into dance--tap lessons at age six with Ruth Williams was disastrous: "I hated it. I stood there and cried." Then, accidentally, he discovered Sheldon B. Hoskins's class in ballet and "interpretive dance" and promptly enrolled. He was twelve. "I wanted to dance from the time I started dancing," he says. "I was only concerned about my piano lessons and this dance class once a week. I had no idea what I was going to do when I grew up."

At the High School of Performing Arts, Williams met his colleague, choreographer Eleo Pomare, with whom he danced at community centers, and even created a dance company, the Corybantes. Ailey saw Williams dance one of Pomare's solos, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, in the late 1950s. Until his dying day, Ailey teased Williams about the solo "because I didn't understand what I was dancing in the performance," Williams explains.

May O'Donnell is one of the artists to whom Williams is most grateful. "She was instrumental for me getting to Miss Graham's studio," he says. "May coaxed us to go and see what was going on out there in the dance world, and that is why I love that woman to death."

Graham had already spotted Williams when he was a student at the Juilliard School, where she was teaching an advanced class, and had immediately offered him a six-month scholarship to her school. "I got caught up with Donny McKayle. I took ballet with Anthony Tudor. Talley Beatty, I got caught up with Donny McKayle. I took ballet with Antony Tudor. Anyway, Martha was teaching and I was eager, watching to see what was what. Martha gave me the stare, like, `Where did you come from?'" Ailey was an occasional fellow student at Graham's studio in the 1950s and 1960s. "He didn't take classes as we did," Williams recalls. "Alvin would come to class once in a blue moon. I was absolutely in awe of Alvin because he was gay and such a beautiful man."

In 1961 Williams joined the Martha Graham Dance Company. Today he still teaches at its school, and his one wish for the near future is to perform The Revivalist's solo from her masterpiece, Appalachian Spring. He left the company in 1964 but returned to perform in some secondary Graham works until 1968. "I felt as though I had to break away from the priestess, and I had done all I could do with her group. With Martha I discovered that I was a modern dancer."

Toward the end of 1963, the Ailey company was preparing to go to Europe, and Williams was about to quit Graham and leave on his own for Germany. "I was a packed, and Alvin called me," Williams recalls. "Alvin knew I had danced the Beatty works, and he needed someone who could pick up his own choreography quickly. So that's how I got into the Ailey company."

With Ailey, Williams discovered his identity as a man, a human being, and an artist. Thirty-three years later, Williams is still with the Ailey company; he will perform during its current City Center season, beginning this month. "Individualism was the wonderful aspect about the Ailey company," he explains. "We were all individuals: Jimmy Truitte, Kelvin Rotardier, John Parks, Bill Louther, Morton Winston, Clive Thompson. I think Alvin wanted a strong male company."

Once in Paris, Ailey taught Williams his Duke Ellington solo in Reflections in D in half an hour. Soon afterward, Ailey told Williams to perform it, but Williams insisted he wasn't ready. "He had so many twiddly elements with his hands that I couldn't do," Williams recalls, "and then I couldn't do Alvin's isolations with the head." After Ailey received a bad review in Zurich, however, he told Williams, "I'm never going to dance again. Reflections in D is your piece." It became identified as William's solo for the next twenty-five years, until Ailey asked him to teach it to Aubrey Lynch II, the last male dancer he chose to join his main company.

When Ailey stopped performing, he also relinquished his solo Hermit Songs to the various men in the company. "Bill Louther did Hermit Songs for a minute," says Williams. "Then Kelvin Rotardier did it for a minute. Then Clive Thompson danced it for a minute. I learned Hermit Songs and did it for two minutes. But Hermit Songs is really associated with Kelvin. Alvin told me himself, `Kelvin is the only Man in the company.' Alvin saw himself in Kelvin Rotardier." (A shocked Rotardier comments, "Alvin wanted to see men expressing themselves through movement. When Alvin saw Dudley crystallizing and defining his movement in Reflections in D and `I Want to Be Ready' from Revelations, he was ecstatic about Williams's technique and balletic lines. I saw Dudley develop from a dancer to an artist in Alvin's environment.")

Since Williams had never partnered women when he danced for other choreographers, he told Ailey, "I don't partner." Ailey respected his refusal to partner but, Williams notes, "Consequently, I never got a lot to dance because he always had to create something special for me. I didn't grow up picking up women--that wasn't my cup of tea. I was a dancer.

"Let me explain something about Alvin," Williams continues. "Alvin used anything he could get his hands on as far as technique was concerned. If he found out that you were a Graham dancer, he would use the simplest Graham movements. And anything Alvin danced for himself he improvised. He was a good performer--he wasn't a technician. But for me, Alvin had to come up with something stable and substantial to dance when he choreographed."

In Blues Suite, in which Ailey began to develop the unique sensibility derived from his own black cultural expression--which was even more apparent two years later in his monumental classic, Revelations--Ailey gave Williams an Louther a hot spot in the middle of the dance. "We were the two clowns who walked back and forth acting foolish," says Williams. "Anything that would make the audience laugh. The whole theory of Blues Suite is to laugh to keep from crying."

After Ailey became ill in 1970 while the company was performing in Canada, he turned the company over to Williams and Judith Jamison. Shortly after they returned from the tour, Ailey said to Williams, "Hi, chicken. I have a surprise for you." Within two days he choreographed "A Song for You," a new solo for Williams, to the Donny Hathaway recording that Williams had given him during his illness. Two years later, Ailey added sections based on Nina Simone's "Poppies" and on another Hathaway tune, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."

"Alvin wanted to make a suite of Love Songs for me," Williams explains. "There was a moment in Love Songs where Alvin wanted my arms in Fifth Position. I turned my hands around and it made it a style of my own. He never gave me any corrections except once. After I had been dancing Love Songs for almost ten years, he said, `Oh, by the way, don't hold that arabesque penchee.' I said, `Alvin, I've been dancing this for ten years.' He said, `No, I've been meaning to tell you to not hold that step.'"

During the mid 1970s Ailey began a prolific period during which he choreographed ten dances to the music of Duke Ellington. Williams danced the Ailey staple Night Creature and the poignant Three Black Kings, with John Parks and Clive Thompson. But although Ailey established himself as an important twentieth-century choreographer, Williams feels that throughout his whole life Ailey was never satisfied. "Alvin couldn't keep up with himself," observes Williams, and in the late seventies Ailey had severe nervous breakdown. "I think that was one of the pressures that was killing him; he had to create a new dance every time there was a New York season. That was driving him crazy."

Nonetheless, Ailey returned in 1980 with the astonishing Phases set to the music of American jazz masters, including Paraoh Sanders, Lonnie Liston Smith, and Max Roach. "A lot of Phases was stolen from Lester Horton," says Williams. "I remember one day Alvin stopped rehearsal and he had me dance my part while everyone else watched. Alvin turned to the company and said, `Why can't you dance like him?' I was stunned because I never knew how Alvin felt about me.

"I loved dancing Alvin's Landscape in 1981," says Williams. "When they revived it in the late eighties before Alvin died, I embellished on what I had danced when it first premiered." Williams also loved dancing in three of Ailey's last works: For Bird with Love (1984), Survivors (1986), and Opus McShann (1988). "What Alvin wanted to do with Bird and Opus was to create a full evening-length work, but it never jelled," says Williams. "And even though Alvin said he was choreographing Survivors [about Nelson and Winnie Mandela] as something special for me, I think it was really for Sharrell Mesh."

Williams recalls one of his last encounters with Ailey prior to his death in 1989: "Alvin said, `My, you look fabulous.' Alvin kept saying, `You look exactly the same to me as when you came into the company! I said, `Alvin, you've seen me almost every single day of my whole life. How could I change for you?' He said, `But you are still dancing so well. Your legs are up, an you still have a beautiful line. You'll have a place in the company for the rest of your life! If it wasn't for Alvin Ailey, I don't think I would be where I am now, quite honestly," says Williams. "What if I had gone to Germany?

"My life couldn't have been any better," he concludes. "There are two things I am so happy I said to my father and to Alvin before they died. I told them both thank you and I love you."

Robert Tracy is the author of Balanchine's Ballerinas: Conversations with the Muses and Goddess: Martha Graham's Dancers Remember, recently published by Limelight Editions.