Although the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has performed in Pittsburgh many times over the years, it's still easy to remember the very first one that started it all for the Pittsburgh Dance Council at Heinz Hall, where the audience got up and danced in the aisles. This company could have that kind of effect on people.

		Related coverage Ailey had profound influence professionally, personally

Little did we know that the man whose choreography lit up the stage with the gospel-driven masterpiece, "Revelations," was fighting mental illness and a pervading sense of low self-worth. But he lived as he choreographed, with an openness that brought a continually warm response from those around him.

Although he would spend his career trying to surpass the success of "Revelations" and was often accused of commercialism, Ailey would go on to receive many honors -- including the United Nations Peace Medal, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award and a Kennedy Center Honor -- before dying in 1989 of complications from AIDS.

His vision lives on in the continuing ribbon of Ailey dancers who still carry that exuberance to audiences all around the globe. When the company celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, it had played to more than 19 million people, making Ailey the most popular concert dance company in the world.

By now the founder's story is almost as familiar as that opening image in "Revelations," in which a spiritual group of dancers stretch their arms to the heavens. Things weren't always that beautiful during his childhood, but what he called his "blood memory" would always be with him.

Born in Rogers, Texas, in 1931, son of Lula Elizabeth Cliff and Alvin Ailey, who left early on, he followed his mother through several rural towns before heading for Los Angeles. But he took with him the blues, ragtime and folk songs, along with an abiding comfort in the gospel music he found in the Southern Baptist Church.

In Los Angeles, he saw his first dance performance, the Ballets Russes, and later excitedly discovered the Afro-centric moves of Katherine Dunham and the talents of jazz great Jack Cole. His life was being transformed, but it was only at the urging of friend Carmen de Lavallade that the teenager began to take classes with Lester Horton, the only teacher and choreographer who offered integrated classes and a performing company as well.

After Horton's death, Ailey and de Lavallade snatched an opportunity to head for New York in 1954 as lead dancers in the Broadway musical "House of Flowers."

He would never go back.

By 1957, Ailey became something of a celebrity on Broadway and lured a small cadre of professional black dancers to participate in his first concert. Unable to pay them and rehearsing in small studios between his own performances, he made them feel that this was a collaborative venture. Success was immediate. One of the pieces on the program, "Blues Suite," using the music that was so much a part of the black experience, would become a pillar of the repertory for years.

There was much more to come: By 1960, he had drawn from the comfort of the Baptist church experience to produce "Revelations," from "black women everywhere -- especially our mothers" in "Cry" (1971) and from the sweet jazz of Duke Ellington in "Night Creatures" (1974).

He was unquenchable in his drive and unfailingly supportive of his company, and the dancers sensed it. Dudley Williams retired this past December after 40 years with the company. Masazumi Chaya came in 1972 and stayed on to become rehearsal director and an invaluable associate artistic director. Ailey also found a lithe, tall beauty, Judith Jamison, in a ballet class. She would become a beacon in his company and go on to choreograph her own work.

When he began to slip, they took up the slack.

Before Ailey died, he hand-picked Jamison to run the company. Today she admits that they are in a good place "for a not-for-profit organization -- we have to always remember that," she says with a knowing and generous laugh over the telephone from Los Angeles. "We count our blessings daily."

A recipient herself of a Kennedy Center Honor, she rambles off the company's present accomplishments, starting with the $54 million Joan Weill Center for Dance, the "largest dedicated dance building in the United States" at 405 W. 55th St. in Manhattan. With eight floors, it contains 12 classrooms for modern dance, ballet, hip-hop, yoga and flamenco, a library, administrative offices and a theater for experimentation and school performances. Artists from Bill T. Jones to Beyonce have already begun to rehearse there. The new building has also enabled the company to expand its educational programs, including a school curriculum based on "Revelations," a bachelor of fine arts degree through nearby Fordham University and AileyCamp, a national program for under-served youngsters.

"It's an extension of our repertory, saying that we're going to celebrate the past, walk with the present, but also get on that precipice and see what the future could possibly be," notes Jamison.

The Dance Council program will include her latest piece, "Love Stories," which echoes that philosophy and the communal sharing initiated by Ailey. Using music by Stevie Wonder, Jamison invited Philadelphia hip-hop artist Rennie Harris, along with Robert Battle, another rising young choreographer who recently taught several pieces at Point Park University and Xpressions Dance Company here, to collaborate with her. Battle's "Juba," an exploration of folk dance and ritual with quotes from African, Russian and contemporary club styles, will also be on the program.

Jamison addresses the past -- those small rehearsal studios that peppered her early career with Ailey -- using dancers in old-fashioned bulky leotards and woolen tights. Harris represents the present, where Jamison sees "our own American hip-hop language being translated everywhere we go." Battle looks to the future as he "invents a vocabulary that takes chances."

"It's a reflection of light and partnership and support and love and fun and endurance," Jamison says expansively. "You hear Alvin's voice in it; you know I always look to do that. How fortunate for me and for all of us who are living in his wake."