Masazumi Chaya: Alvin Ailey's artistic lieutenant.

By the fourth week of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's thirty-fifth-anniversary season at Manhattan's City Center Theater in 1993, injuries to several dancers had necessitated changes of program. I had expressly attended the matinee on December 29 in order to see Jerome Robbins's N. Y. Export: Opus Jazz. To my dismay the ballet, which I had performed in the mid-1970s with the Joffrey, was replaced by Ailey's Revelations. There were cast changes, too. One of these changes had not been announced to the audience, but when a certain compact, charismatic performer made his entrance in Ailey's ballet Memoria, my attention stayed with him until the end. I had admired his dancing since I first saw him on the Ailey stage in John Butler's Genesis-inspired work, According to Eve, in 1972. Then over the years we had acknowledged each other's presence in ballet class with Maggie Black. He had distinguished himself onstage as a dancer of immense joy and passion for fifteen years. He is now Judith Jamison's associate artistic director. His name is Masazumi Chaya.

When we meet for our interview, Chaya blushes and tells me he wished that a company member could have gone on instead in Memoria. He vowed to make sure that in the future every section of every ballet has a second cast. Unfortunately, this goal requires time, and time requires money. As any artistic director will confirm, this is a dire period for the arts in general, and dance in particular. "We have only six weeks a year to get the entire repertoire together," Chaya states earnestly. "Maybe one extra week before the spring tour; perhaps one week squeezed in elsewhere." He pauses as the ramifications of his dilemma sink in. Then, typically, he chooses to be upbeat about the situation: "Sometimes I joke with Judi that I do not rehearse; I 'put together'! Judi is trying so hard to get us extra weeks! I miss those days when we really had a dance 'studio.' Now we are forced to have a dance 'factory.' It's 'Hi! Okay, on these counts you have to do this, this, and this.' There is no longer any time for craft."

I agree wholeheartedly with Chaya's sobering appraisal of the present situation. Every American dance company faces such obstacles. Even so, this current generation of Ailey dancers is brilliant, and for this Chaya gives full credit to Jamison: "She's great! One time I had to restage Masekela Langage for a European tour. Only four dancers knew it from before. Everyone else was new. I had great doubts about getting it to a level that would have satisfied Alvin, had he still been with us. But Judi came into the studio and remembered things Alvin said when he was creating the ballet. Not just counts, but attitudes, and character, and reasons for doing the movement." The rhythm of Chaya's speech quickens with excitement as he recalls Jamison's work. "In the end we got two complete casts to perform that ballet, and they were both excellent. They took Judi's magic and presented it to the audience."

Born in Fukuoka, Japan, Chaya had dreams of becoming an actor. As a teenager he had served as the dresser to a celebrated Kabuki performer in Tokyo. This training opened his eyes to the fact that every aspect of a theatrical production is important: "There's the guy who builds the set, the lady who just does the hair, the cast, the people who take care of the costumes. Without any one of them the show does not go on. That is what I learned during those years." The actor for whom Chaya worked advised him to study and arranged for him to have acting, singing, and dancing classes. This led to dancing on television shows as well as in musical productions in Japan. Eventually his classical training began. There came a point when his parents wanted him to quell this theatrical "fever" and attend medical, school (his father was a doctor and his mother a nurse), but Chaya decided to pursue his dancing dreams instead and left for New York City.

"The New York dance scene was really thriving when I arrived in the early seventies," he recalls. "I remember being in class with all these people whom I admired. Ballet dancers, modem dancers--all studying together. It was wild!

"I went along to an audition for Richard Englund's Ballet Repertory Company. Someone had said, 'Why don't you come?' So I went at the last moment just in my street clothes. When I arrived I saw all the boys in black tights and white T-shirts, and the girls in pink tights and pointe shoes. I was going to leave, but then I stayed and danced just in some jazz pants and bare feet. I got the job!"

A while later Chaya's close friend, Michihiko Oka, auditioned for the Ailey company. He was accepted and was asked to return at a later date to discuss contracts. "They asked Oka if he could bring someone to translate. So after another friend of ours backed out because he had a cold on that day, I went along with Oka."

Chaya struck up a conversation with Ailey's general manager at that time, Ivy Clarke. "She recognized my name from a review that Clive Barnes had given me with Richard Englund's group. She asked me why I hadn't been at the audition with Oka, and I told her that I had been in Massachusetts, that I hadn't known about it. So she said, 'Well, why don't you come and audition tomorrow?' I went, and they took me into the company with Oka."

The pressure was on from the beginning. Eight dancers had just left the company, and Chaya had two weeks to learn five ballets. "Alvin was always so kind," Chaya reflects affectionately. "I would call him Mr. Ailey, and he would say, 'Please, Chaya. It's Alvin.' And I would reply, 'Yes, Mr. Ailey,' and Alvin would laugh. He would always travel with the dancers. Never in first class. On the bus he was always right there among us. I even shared a dressing room with Alvin!"

I ask Chaya what prompted him to stop dancing. Without hesitation he answers that he felt that younger dancers were not getting the chances they deserved because Alvin's loyalty had kept him onstage front and center for fifteen years. But there were other, less altruistic, reasons as well: "I was in good shape. I wanted to stop while I was still on top, not because I was getting old or had an injury or something. I thought I would get involved with fashion. I love clothes!

"It was funny," Chaya continues. "I think a stagehand told Alvin that I was considering leaving. It was in Paris. I asked to meet with Alvin, and we set up an appointment. But he didn't show up. Then, for the next month, whenever he saw me coming he would avoid me!"

Eventually Ailey persuaded Chaya to become the assistant to the rehearsal director, and a couple of years later he graduated to company rehearsal director. Then in 1991, Jamison, who inherited the directorship of the company after Ailey's death, asked Chaya to be her associate artistic director, a role he now fills with the same joy and passion with which he graced the stage as a dancer.

The love and respect Chaya holds for Ailey shine brightly through his eyes as we speak. "It's strange, but since Alvin died I feel him so strongly. Sometimes when I'm alone in the studio trying to recapture the motivation for a certain movement of Alvin's, people come up to me and ask, 'Who were you just talking to?' I had, in fact, been saying, 'Alvin, why did you do this? What's the reason for that step?' He's always with me.

"Alvin never really used to give notes after performance. He would walk up to you and maybe say, 'What was that?' Or sometimes he would say with humor, 'Please do my choreography.' But now and then he would tell you, 'I really liked what you did,' and for me that was better than a raise in salary!"

One of the pieces Ailey choreographed on Chaya remains his favorite. "Right after Alvin came back after his nervous breakdown, he created a ballet called Phases, and he gave me a section in it. It was so good to have him back! He had lots of energy, and he worked really fast. That experience meant a lot to me."

One of the challenges for Chaya now is that he has to re-create and stage the repertoire on young dancers who never saw or studied with Ailey. This means starting from scratch, and analyzing and articulating the movement so that he can then pass it on eloquently to the new company members. "There was a time when I could tell dancers to do the walk from Blues Suite, and they would know exactly what to do. There was so much that didn't need to be said. They could see how Alvin moved. Now I have to be able to tell them where the movement starts . . . subtle differences in hand gestures, how to shift the weight."

Chaya is optimistic about the future. With Jamison at the helm, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is in accomplished and caring hands, and Chaya clearly cherishes his responsibilities as Keeper of the Flame. Surrounding them both, and goading them on, is the strong presence of Ailey himself. As Chaya stated to me at our meeting's end, "I really feel as though I will see Alvin again. And I'll have so many great stories to tell him! In many ways, knowing Alvin was like reading a newspaper. You learned so much. He would teach you so much. For me, somehow, a day without Alvin is incomplete."