It's easy to read about Alvin Ailey's influence over the past 40 years, but a true understanding comes from talking to those who have their own "blood memories" of Ailey himself.

Neil Barclay, president of Pittsburgh's African American Cultural Center, never met Ailey, but as a major dance presenter in Los Angeles and in Austin, Texas, he would book the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater every 18 months.

"Oh, those dancers," Barclay says. "It was the technical virtuosity, a certain polish, finish and pop. The company crystallized the black experience in America."

That influence spawned at least five major companies built in the Ailey image -- Philadanco, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble in Denver, Lula Washington Dance Theatre in Los Angeles and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company -- and many small groups, inspired by Ailey's success.

Ron Hutson, a member of the dance staff at Point Park University, takes it from a historical viewpoint in his academic classes, noting how Ailey took Katherine Dunham's traditional African dance, coming from Haitian religious practices, and Lester Horton's abstract interpretation, and added ballet to "create a wonderful artistic palette. It appeals to people on a visceral level -- you feel it."

Also a choreographer, Hutson took seminars and classes at the Ailey company headquarters in New York during 1989, just before Ailey's death. He encountered Ailey once in the hall, where the legend threw him the biggest smile and said hello. "I was so disarmed, so completely disarmed," Hutson recalls.

Pittsburgh Dance Ensemble's Greer Reed and Xpressions Dance Company's Staycee Walters had closer encounters with Ailey while students at his New York school in the late '80s. Reed was a member of the Ailey II company and participated in a work-study program under Ailey.

"It was amazing," says Reed. "He would ask me to come into the office and watch a tape with him, then ask my opinion. And during student performances, he would sit in the first row. He really took part in all aspects of the company and the school."

Walters found him "to be very sweet, very personable, very inspiring. He really made you want to dance," she explains. "And he had such a joy about the craft. Most African-American choreographers came through the Ailey school."

Walters still recalls his funeral, where so many packed the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, where Donna Wood performed "Cry," but there was "a strong feeling that we had to move on."

Remembering how Ailey would often come into the lounge to talk to the students, she still does a company warm-up based on the Horton-Ailey style. "It's the basis of everything I do," she says. "He's what makes me unafraid to do the same thing."