Can dance inspire social change? The Washington Post certainly seems to think so. In a piece about the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's visit to Russia over the past week, the Post pointed out how the black dance troupe could make a positive impact on race relations in a country where ethnic tensions run high.
The late Alvin Ailey established the African-American dance company in 1958 "to say something about the beauty of black people, about the elegance . . . and about their intelligence." That year, segregation was still widespread in the U.S. and blacks were routinely denied their civil rights.
In Russia, a different set of blacks face pervasive discrimination. According to the Post:
"Although Russia's laws are not discriminatory in the manner of American Jim Crow legislation, they are arbitrarily applied, and many people here hold a deep-rooted prejudice against their fellow citizens from the Caucasian mountain regions of the country such as Chechnya and Dagestan. The ethnic groups there tend to have dark hair and be olive-skinned. Russians call them black; they are frequently demeaned and their rights violated."
The Post reports, for example, that police routinely subject Caucasians to racial profiling. And last December, thousands of Russian soccer fans participated in a race riot in Moscow in which immigrants from the North Caucasus were targeted, Time noted. Not only were many immigrants killed but also Hitler salutes were raised during nationalist rallies and nearly 3,000 youths were arrested for plotting hate crimes.
Will the Ailey dancers, in a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, give Russians a new way to view minority groups? It's uncertain if seeing an African-American dance company will change perceptions about "blacks" in Russia and beyond, but the company's artistic director, Charles Battle, did have the opportunity to bring up its civil rights roots when asked about Alvin Ailey's founding vision. Of that vision, Battle said:
"This was more than a dance company. It was a movement, and we feel connected to it."
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Visits Russia, a Country Where Migrants from the North Caucasus routinely face discrimination
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