Guardian Angel
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Masazumi Chaya 35th Anniversary Celebration
New York City Center, NYC
December 20, 2007
By
TOBI TOBIAS
tobi@voiceofdance.com
VoiceofDance.com 2007
Masazumi Chaya, Associate Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Andrew Eccles.
How do you create a performance celebrating a man whose current work is essentially behind the scenes, invisible to the audience? That was the question on December 18, when the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater honored its associate artistic director, Masazumi Chaya, on the occasion of his 35 years with the company.
Yes, Chaya (as everyone calls him) has staged many of Ailey's present productions of repertory works'retrieving some of them from near-oblivion'but the general public never lends a thought to such matters. Yet he's invaluable, a fact the troupe's artistic director, Judith Jamison, has recognized by making him her second in command.
Chaya's job description is staggering. He stages Ailey's dances, for the company and abroad as well. This season, for the home team, he mounted Ailey's 1971 Flowers (which traces the downward spiral of an artist'originally modeled on Janis Joplin, but just as relevant today'who succumbs to the dangerous lures of fame) and Talley Beatty's 1959 The Road of the Phoebe Snow, the latter with such clarity, it all but sears your eyeballs. He shapes the Ailey's programs and suggests casting. He supervises the infinitely detailed scheduling for a troupe that is on the move, touring worldwide, for half the year. He teaches company class on those tours and, both at home and away, rehearses and coaches. He also counsels. Dancers can go to him with their troubles'of body or of spirit. I can well understand this. Five minutesconversation with him in a theater lobby (even missing some of the meanings in his enchantingly Japanese-inflected English) and you know you've encountered a deep soul.
I recall him vividly as a dancer. He was a powerhouse, but a deeply self-contained one, such as one sees in traditional Asian martial arts. This force never got in the way of lyricism when it was required'or sheer hi-jinks for that matter. He always seemed intent about something, be it the joy or anger or grief expressed by the choreography and music themselves, or possibly something beyond even that'perhaps the ecstasy of being an "acrobat of God."
Chaya was born in Fukuoka, Japan. In his teens, he worked in Tokyo as a dresser to a famous Kabuki actor, who saw to it that the youth had lessons in the performing arts. Eventually, he appeared on stage in some popular entertainments and began his study of classical dance'all this to the increasing despair of his parents, both in the medical profession, who had their hearts set on his becoming a doctor. But the young man knew what he wanted or, you might say, intuited his destiny.
Masazumi Chaya (Front/center) in Talley Beatty's The Road of the Phoebe Snow. Photo courtesy of Alvin Ailey American Dance Foundation Archives.
In 1970 Chaya emigrated to New York, where he studied modern dance and performed with Richard Englund's Ballet Repertory Company. Two years later, he accompanied his good friend Michihiko Oka to an Ailey call-back audition, to help translate, and ended up being invited to audition himself. They both succeeded.
Chaya served the company for fifteen years as a dancer and, though the company lists its performers alphabetically, clearly he was one of its stars. Gradually, Ailey began grooming him for additional roles'directing rehearsals, assisting choreographers, and the like. This organic expansion of Chaya's life in dance culminated in 1991 when Jamison, Ailey's successor as leader of the company, accorded him the title of associate artistic director.
The celebratory evening reflected Chaya's extreme modesty and impeccable taste. The speechifying, mercifully brief, began with the young star Clifton Brown'an elegant figure on every count'pointing out how Chaya "always finds the good in every situation and every person." He was succeeded by Jamison, actually flustered for once, as her enthusiasm threatened to run away with her. I managed to scribble down some of her phrases: "Thirty-five years! I don't think he missed a day. Not a day!" "He has an unparalled history with this company." "He is daring, unafraid, caring'and he has a sense of humor." "His integrity is unnerving. He is one of the finest examples of what Alvin wanted us all to be'a good human being." "I couldn't do this without him. God bless him for being with us!"
A brief film followed, detailing Chaya's history with the company, its hero himself providing narration and some of his illustrious senior colleagues, homages. Chaya then spoke live, characteristically winnowing his message down to a thank you, and Jamison read a message from his mother, touching in its simplicity.
The dances that followed were a take-no-prisoners rendition of Ulysses Dove's 1989 Episodes, in a Chaya-staged production; the aforementioned Flowers, in which I can't imagine that Chaya didn't have a hand in bringing out Gwynenn Taylor Jones's pitch-perfect characterization of the Joplin figure'simultaneously lovely and tragic (until then I'd never seen her so capable and affecting); and, of course, Ailey's signature piece, the 1960 Revelations, which, Chaya told Gia Kourlas of Time Out, remains his favorite of the master's ballets.
The evening ended in an ovation'from the public and onstage artists alike--with staff members and additional dancers in mufti seconding the performers in trying to get Chaya to overcome his reticence'largely in vain. He stepped forward because they thrust him forward, then waved to the audience and headed for the wings, calling "Goodbye." But it wasn't a farewell at all. It was a prelude to the next day, where he'd be back at work, playing a discrete but major role in keeping the company operating smoothly and, most important, seeing that the Ailey tradition remains vibrant.
Chaya idolized Ailey, who died in 1989, and channels him in the same way Suzanne Farrell channels Balanchine. "When I restage Ailey dances," he told Playbill last year [CC: 2006], "I feel as if I'm speaking with Alvin, I call the process 'visiting Alvin.'" The otherworldly connection appears eerie to the non-mystical, yet it seems, in both cases, to be very effective. Chaya's transcendental bent is evident, too, in his official program bio, which ends "He wishes to recognize the artistic contribution and spirit of his late friend and fellow artist, Michihiko Oka." To Chaya, apparently, death is part of the continuum of life and connections do not end with it.
