The ghost of Alvin Ailey brings the Jazz District back to life

As more than 400 students pour out of Allen Edison Village School in silent, single-file lines, a few of them can't stifle dance moves. Passing through the hallway, a teenager in a red coat swings her arms in time with some unheard rhythm. Outside, approaching a convoy of 11 school buses, a young student with pigtails and a pink parka twirls around a traffic cone.

"We're not doing that," a teacher chides her.

These kids regularly spend time with dance instructors from the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, a group that uses the techniques and inspiration of the famous choreographer to teach kids the basics of modern ballet. Today, though, the students go to the KCFAA.

When the buses pull up to the Midland downtown, middle-schoolers shuffle haltingly through the doors, gazing up at the ornate décor of the renovated theater. Some are startled out of their awe by KCFAA artistic director Michael Joy, a tall, thin man with a wide smile who knows many of the students.

"You remember me?" he asks a group of elementary-school children. "The last time I saw you, you were in kindergarten, huh?"

Inside, the hall reverberates with the excited conversations of more than 2,000 students. Grade-school kids bounce in their seats, exuding energetic impatience. Teenage girls in gold hoop earrings crane their necks to catch a glimpse of the high-school boys.

A large video screen is rolled away from the front of the stage, revealing a line of ballet dancers in sweat suits stretching their legs against a long bar. The students shriek as though the curtain just went up on pop-star Chris Brown. As the dancers continue to warm up — undulating their hips, flipping partners over shoulders — bursts of applause and shouts ripple through the young audience.

Finally, Ronnie Favors, the dance company's rehearsal director, darts onstage. She welcomes the children to this special performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater — more than 4,300 local students will see the company perform over two days. She explains that Alvin Ailey started the dance troupe 50 years ago, casting black dancers to perform modern ballets depicting and celebrating African-American heritage. He changed the face of modern dance, she tells them, and traveled all over the world.

"He created a sensation that has not died down yet," she says.

The lights go down, and the students giggle and shift in their seats. In the darkened hall, the dancers rise and fall in a golden spotlight, their graceful movements breathing expression into a gospel song. Silence settles over the packed house. By the final dance, the students have been confined to their seats for more than an hour. But they bob their heads and sway in their seats unselfconsciously as the dancers, dressed in flowing dresses and flower-studded hats, raise their arms and bounce their knees to a jaunty hymn: Rocka my soul by the bosom of Abraham.

After the children leave, the Midland is silent for only a few hours. By 7 p.m., women in evening gowns and men holding the hands of their young daughters fill the hall for a performance celebrating the Ailey company's 50th anniversary. They watch enduring classics, including "Revelations" (Ailey's passionate rendering of African-American spirituality in 1930s, red-dirt Texas, heralded by critics as the most important choreography of the 20th century) and "For Bird With Love" (a tribute to jazz legend Charlie Parker that was created with funds raised by the KCFAA). The Midland patrons are seeing sequences from brand-new dances; the company hasn't yet opened its new season on its home stage in New York City.

Anywhere else, the Ailey troupe takes its turn onstage and then disappears until its next tour rolls through. In Kansas City, though, the Ailey presence lingers year-round with classes and performances. For the past quarter-century, this has been the second home of the first African-American choreographer to make it big on the world stage. It is also the second home of his legacy.lvin Ailey's roots in Kansas City were never about geography. He grew up in a dusty town in Texas, found movement in a back-alley studio in Los Angeles and rose to fame in New York City. His connection to Kansas City was seeded by a 1983 walk through the abandoned remnants of the Jazz District at 18th Street and Vine.

That leisurely afternoon stroll was with Allan Gray. Now a Lee's Summit city councilman, Gray speaks with a soft, reserved dignity and serene self-confidence. As a founder in the 1980s of the Gentlemen of Distinction, a group of black professionals, he considered himself well-educated in African-American history and culture. But he wasn't familiar with the name Alvin Ailey until 1983 when the Folly Theater gave his group 500 tickets to an upcoming Ailey performance.

He soon learned who Ailey was and how his works incorporated gospel and blues and the African-American experience. Ailey had taken his pieces to Brazil, Japan and even the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. "He was creating a dance company and putting African-Americans onstage in places in this country where they couldn't even drink at the same water fountain," Gray says. "He was making changes in how the world viewed the dancer and ballerina prototype."