This age-appropriate lesson plan explores the professional contributions of gay Modern Dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, whose groundbreaking work through the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre brought Modern Dance out of classical ballet’s shadow into its own light as an American dance form. Ailey transformed the cultural landscape and, in the process, transformed the lives of non-white dancers through a multicultural dance company that provided opportunities the industry, as a whole, lacked. Like all Legacy Project lesson plans, this document highlights four different learning tracks according to James Banks's multicultural education model and Bloom's Taxonomy. Tracks 1 - 4 are roughly structured to align with the cognitive retention and synthesis capabilities of students from early-to-mid Elementary School (Track 1); late Elementary-to-early Middle School (Track 2); late Middle School-to-early High School (Track 3); and early-to-late High School.
Suggested Study Subject Integration: Art, Dance, American History, LGBTQ History
