Jau’mair Garland, James Gilmer
Pittsburgh natives Jau’mair Garland, James Gilmer excited for the homecoming
Jau’mair Garland and James Gilmer see the long-awaited upcoming Alvin Ailey performance in Pittsburgh as a full circle moment in their dance careers.
“It feels really good and honestly really surreal,” said Garland, who attended Propel Homestead before moving on to Pittsburgh CAPA where he graduated. He lived in Carrick and Mount Washington, and joined the Alvin Ailey dance company in January of this year.
“It’s my first professional job and it’s such a beautiful company and this experience especially means a lot to me, and I am super grateful to be having this moment early on in my career. I’m excited to share the stories that the company channels and the beauty of it all with the people back home.”
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company will perform at the Benedum Center on May 9 at 8 p.m. for one night only. Tickets for the show can be purchased by visiting www.trustarts.org. The company was slated to perform in Pittsburgh in 2020 but that concert was postponed due to the COVID pandemic.
Fellow Ailey dancer and former Highland Park resident James Gilmer echoed Garland’s sentiments about performing in Pittsburgh next month. “I’m really excited for Pittsburgh to see this program for this year, which for me shows the vast array of talent physically and emotionally of my fellow dancers throughout that evening,” Gilmer said.
The program will begin with Jamar Roberts’ “In a Sentimental Mood,” then continue with Kyle Abraham’s “Are You in Your Feelings?” and culminate with Alvin Ailey’s iconic work, “Revelations.”
Garland was first introduced to Gilmer when Gilmer taught a master class in dance at CAPA during Garland’s sophomore year. The two kept in touch and when Garland went to the Ailey Summer Intensive in 2019—Gilmer’s first year with the company—the two reconnected.
“Jau’mair was in my class. The year I joined Ailey, he went to Ailey’s rep. I saw him in the building, and I knew he was going to dance there. Knowing the kind of dancer he is and knowing him as a person, when he came to New York in December he crashed on my couch during the week of his audition. I had a really strong feeling that he was going to get offered something that he was going to be happy with,” Gilmer said. “He’s been such an incredible addition to the company, and I don’t think we’d be able to do any of this spring tour without him. It’s fun being out there with him. It’s a full circle moment for me. I’ve never gotten to be on stage with someone that I’ve had as a student. It’s been great.”
GIlmer and Garland are both excited to be performing together in “Revelations” and that the company will be performing Lincoln-Larimer native Kyle Abraham’s “Are You in Your Feelings?”
“Are You in Your Feelings?” is a celebration of Black culture, Black music and the youthful spirit that resonates in everyone. It is scored to a mixtape of soul, Hip-Hop and R&B and explores the links between music, communication and personal memory.
“A lot of these songs are the songs that I play when I’m at my lowest and at my highest,” explained Abraham, a MacArthur Fellowship award-winning choreographer. “I wanted to find a way to thank those artists for their music and thank our culture for their contributions to this world in which we live.”
“That’s my favorite part about coming home,” said Garland, who was introduced to Abraham’s work while a student at CAPA. “We had so many opportunities to see his company and experience that. For all three of us to do this, I’m super excited and elated to do this.”
“Seeing Kyle’s creative process and being in the room with him is something I’ve wanted to do since I started dancing professionally and moved away from home, so I’m really looking forward to sharing all of that with Pittsburgh,” Gilmer added.
Gilmer will be featured in the opening work of the program. Both men will perform together in “Revelations” in the work’s yellow scene, towards the end of the show.
Gilmer trained at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School and CAPA but got bitten by the dance bug early in life and began dancing at the age of 5. He joined Ailey in 2019 right before the COVID-19 pandemic. He credits his family upbringing to his amazing dance career.
“I come from an artistic family. Early on my parents made it accessible to me and my sister to see dance productions or Broadway productions that came through Pittsburgh,” Gilmer told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “A lot of times my grandmother and I would get tickets to anything and everything that the (Pittsburgh Dance Council) would bring in, what Dance Alloy was putting on, Kelly Strayhorn and later on the August Wilson (African American Cultural) Center; they made sure I could be in the audience. It really gave me so much perspective from a very early age.”
That love for Alvin Ailey and dance is why former Pittsburgh resident and Point Park University graduate Toni Gloster wrote the book, “Embraced by Dance,” which tells the story of Matthew Rushing. Rushing and Gloster will be on hand for the Pittsburgh performance.
“I was born in 1959 and the company was created in 1958. By the time I started dancing at age 11 it was in existence for 10 years. I was around 13 when I first saw the company,” Gloster recalled. “The company back then was a smaller company that was driving from city-to-city themselves. The dancers were the costume department, the drivers and everything, unlike now. But for Black dance, Alvin Ailey is the pinnacle of a modern company. It set the precedent for professional dancers of color to make a living in dance.
A Point Park dance graduate and former Hill District resident, Gloster, like Garland, was a part of Ailey’s Summer Intensive program and has built solid relationships within the dance community.
Gloster interviewed Rushing for one hour per year for 10 years before he would perform to learn about his life as a dancer and years with Ailey. Although he is not from Pittsburgh, Rushing, who is currently the associate artistic director with Alvin Ailey, has been with the company for more than three decades.
“The book is a beautiful work,” said Rushing about “Embraced by Dance.”
The book is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.
“I feel nothing but pride to see so many people connected with Ailey from Pittsburgh against the odds because being a Black dancer in Pittsburgh is not easy,” explained Gloster, who moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles 30 years ago.
The Alvin Ailey/Pittsburgh connection is strong. Garland pinches himself every time he steps on stage.
“James and I are together all the time and sometimes we are together backstage and look at each other and say, ‘We both are from Pittsburgh and went to CAPA and are in Alvin Ailey. These three people from Pittsburgh found a way from Pittsburgh to New York and to Alvin Ailey.’”