Robert Tracy

“Ailey Spirit” is a book about doing what your love, no matter what race your are. But this message is very hidden. The story starts with a boy born on a farm in 1931. He lived with his mother, and she tried to give him the best of everything. And in 1943 he moved to Los Angeles for middle school. There he met his future dance partner, Carmen de Lavallade. She got him to realize that dancing was his natural talent. He started to go to dance class with her and their teacher, Lester show more Horton, saw that he was very good. And in 1953 when Horton died off a heart attack, Ailey was chosen to fill in his mentors shoes. Within one year Ailey has choreographed three dances for the company. And by 1958 he was able to create his own dance company. And from then till he died Ailey created many worldwide famous dances like Revelations, Blues Suite, and Cry.

I thought this book was very inspirational because I am a dancer. It talks about a man who went from not even realizing he could dance too owning his own dance company. And to this day his company is still very successful. It shows that my dream to own a dance company has a chance of coming true. But this book was very hard to summarize because it was very complex. It talked about many different things at one time. But it was very interesting to know that the company even went to Russia. show less