Ailey Awakened My Spirit

More cultural events please.

Twenty-seven years is a long time to hold onto a memory of falling asleep during a Merce Cunningham performance at BAM, but some humiliations have staying power. It was 1998, I was young and restless, and my adopted dad had dragged me to what I still rank as one of the most boring performances I'd ever endured. Uncomfortable seats, incomprehensible movements, and a relentless series of nudges to keep me conscious.

I pushed every button that day: protesting before we left, nodding off mid-performance, and probably radiating teenage indifference like a force field.

But here's the thing about people who love you—they don't give up on teaching you, even when you're determined to be unteachable.

Me and my (adoptive) dad.

He wanted to expand my cultural awareness and teach me the value of showing up for someone else's joy, not just my own. I didn't get it then, but the lesson took root anyway, waiting decades to bloom.

Then I saw Alvin Ailey's Revelations.

Opening sequence is breath taking.

My introduction to Revelations came in May 2025 at BAM with my Aunt Rita, a former dancer who understands that some art requires a guide. From the opening note spirituals and gospel that seemed to rise from somewhere deeper than sound.

I was transfixed.

What these dancers can do with their bodies is simply criminal; someone call the police!

Everything worked in perfect harmony: the costumes flowing like prayers, lighting that sculpted space into sanctuary, and choreography that transformed movement into testimony.

Take Me To The Water.

Ailey's 1960 masterpiece draws from his "blood memories" of Texas childhood and Southern Baptist church life, weaving African American history, work songs, and the Black experience into a universal meditation on sorrow, joy, and hope through faith. Divided into three sections—"Pilgrim of Sorrow," "Take Me to the Water" (depicting Ailey's baptism), and "Move, Members, Move" (a joyful church service)—the piece doesn't just tell a story; it lives one, breath by breath, leap by leap. I left BAM understanding why Revelations is the most widely-seen modern dance work globally: it speaks a language older than words.

This space is so beautiful.

Fast forward to December 3rd, 2025, and there I was at City Center with my adoptive dad, coming full circle from that disaster at BAM in 1998. The symmetry felt intentional, like the universe had been waiting for me to grow up enough to appreciate what he'd been trying to teach me all along. This time, I wasn't the petulant kid who equated "cultural enrichment" with torture; I was someone who'd already been converted by Revelations and was bringing my dad into that sacred space.

Now, I'll admit my mind is always floating somewhere—it's difficult for any performance to capture and maintain my attention but this piece completely enraptures me. From the moment the dancers emerged, moving through Wade in the Water with bodies that defied physics and embodied spirit simultaneously, I felt something crack open inside me. The raw emotion Ailey channeled from the Black church that combination of spiritual reverence and earthly passion, perseverance and deliverance bypasses your brain and speaks directly to your soul.

"Sinner man" Hits the emotional core.

What made this particular viewing so profound was the emotional layering: watching Revelations again with the man who'd been patient enough to drag my teenage self to uncomfortable theater seats all those years ago, knowing he'd planted seeds that would eventually grow into this moment of shared understanding. The piece's universal themes of struggle and triumph resonated on multiple levels—not just Ailey's depiction of African American heritage and culture, but my own journey from indifference to reverence, from resistance to receptivity.

I felt my spirit rejuvenate as the dancers moved through gospel and blues, their bodies becoming vessels for collective memory and individual transcendence. Every extension carried the weight of ancestors; every leap embodied joy reclaimed from hardship.

This wasn't just dance it was deliverance, performed by artists whose technical mastery borders on supernatural. Someday I'd like to see the full performance, not just a portion of this piece, because if excerpts can move me this deeply, the complete work might actually change my molecular structure.

Twenty-seven years ago, I learned that love sometimes looks like uncomfortable theater seats and persistent nudges toward consciousness. Last week at City Center, I learned that those lessons compound over time, that showing up for someone else's vision of what matters can eventually become your own revelation.

Revelations is more than Alvin Ailey's iconic masterpiece and a cultural landmark performed worldwide; it's proof that some art doesn't ask for your attention it commands it, holds it, transforms it into something you carry with you long after the final bow. My adoptive dad expanded my cultural awareness in 1998 whether I wanted it or not, and on December 3rd, 2025, I finally got to thank him not with words, but by staying wide awake, leaning forward in my seat, letting this extraordinary work wash over both of us like water, like grace, like coming home.

From BAM to City Center, from Aunt Rita to my dad, Revelations has become my personal through-line, the performance that taught me how to receive beauty when it arrives and how to honor the people who refused to let me stay small.