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Creator
Williams, Dudley, 1938-2015
Call number
(S) *MGZMD 462
Physical description
17.79 linear feet (38 boxes, 6 oversized folders, 7 tubes)
Preferred Citation

Dudley Williams papers, (S) *MGZMD 462. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Jerome Robbins Dance Division
Access to materials
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Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

Dudley Williams (1938-2015) was an African American modern dancer who spent most of his long performance career with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. The Dudley Williams papers document his professional and personal life through correspondence, photographs, programs, posters, date books, travel records, artifacts, and other materials.

Biographical/historical information

Dudley Eugene Williams was born in 1938 in New York City and grew up in the East River Housing Project in Harlem. His father, Ivan Williams, was a carpenter. His mother, Austa (Beckles) Williams, bought the family a small spinet piano, which Dudley learned to play as a child. Initially drawn to instrumental music, Williams attended the High School of the Performing Arts where he shifted his focus to dance, graduating in 1958. While still in high school, he studied with May O'Donnell and performed with her dance company. He attended Juilliard School of Music and Dance on scholarship from 1957 through 1959.

His first professional dance performance was in Show Boat staged at Jones Beach in 1959. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1961. While working with Graham, Williams took a few classes with Alvin Ailey and in 1963 substituted for Ailey himself in a performance of the "Reflections in D" solo in Revelations with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, the preeminent Modern African American dance company. Revelations was inspired by the music of Duke Ellington, and choreographed by Ailey. Williams danced with both the Graham and the Ailey troupes from 1963 until 1968, when he left Graham to become the full-time principal dancer with the Ailey Company. Williams usually performed solos, the most famous of which was "I Wanna Be Ready," also from Revelations. Williams became the longest tenured dancer in the history of the company. He continued to dance with the company until 2005, working with Judith Jamison who succeeded Alvin Ailey as director after Ailey's death due to AIDS in 1989. After his retirement from Ailey, Williams cofounded with Gus Solomons, Jr. and Carmen de Lavallande the Paradigm Dance Company, which was made up entirely of dancers over the age of 40. In 2013, Williams performed one last time with the Ailey Company in "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," the finale of a special New Year's Eve performance of Revelations.

His career spanned over four decades, far longer than is typical in the field of dance. He also trained and taught multiple generations of younger dancers at the Martha Graham School of Dance and at the Ailey Company. He died at home in his apartment in the Westbeth Artists Community in New York City in 2015 at the age of 76.

Scope and arrangement

The collection documents Williams's professional and personal life through correspondence, photographs, programs, posters, date books, travel records, artifacts, and other materials.

Correspondence files occupy a significant share of the collection. Williams toured the world extensively with the Ailey Company and wrote frequently to other dancers, longtime friends and lovers, as well as casual acquaintances during his travels. Personal and professional letters are intermingled in these files. In particular, letters to and from Richard E. Jones, a lover of Williams's in the 1970s, offer a detailed account of Williams's experience of traveling and performing internationally. There is one folder of notes and letters from and about Alvin Ailey. Additional business correspondence can be found in the Employment files. Address Books document relationships Williams maintained all over the world and include the contact information of fellow dancers, dance critics, friends, lovers, and social hot spots.

Williams frequently attended dance performances and concerts, from which he retained nearly every ticket stub, programs, and playbill. Ticket stubs are filed with Artifacts, while Programs constitute their own sizable grouping. Programs and playbills for Williams's own performances and for other performances are intermingled among these files. Some other printed promotional material, such as invitation cards, are also filed in this grouping.

Photographs include professional studio portraits of Williams; action shots of Williams alone or with others in performance and rehearsals; and numerous candid snapshots of Williams alone, traveling, attending cultural events, or with friends. About a third of the photographs are 8 x 10 inch black and white prints, many others are small color or black and white snapshots, and a few oversize prints are also present.

Date Books contain detailed notes handwritten in small print about Williams's professional schedule and personal activities from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Williams toured Europe frequently and Africa at least once with the Ailey Company. Tours and Travel files document these trips and include itineraries, performance schedules, passports, and reference information about destinations. More detailed tour schedules are filed with Employment records.

Education files encompass Williams's elementary schooling through his role as a distinguished alumnus of both the High School of the Performing Arts and Juilliard and include autograph books, yearbooks, a felt pennant, piano recital programs, and alumni lists.

Numerous posters promoting Williams's performances, mostly with Ailey, are included in the collection as are a few pieces of original art for which Williams was apparently the model.

Newspaper and magazine clippings about Williams's performances are present. Some are arranged in scrapbooks and others are loose and filed in folders.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged alphabetically by subject or format.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by Lorri Williams, 2016.

Processing information

Compiled by Heather Halliday, 2017.

Using the collection

Location

Jerome Robbins Dance Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor