Black Men in Dance: The Movement
Aubrey Lynch II
The Movement-Black Men in Dance-Aubrey Lynch-Transcript
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Mentorship has never been more important, particularly for young Black men, never been more important. It’s always been important. We always find ourselves trying to bring up the rear and fight for our place in the sun when we were born to be in the sun. We are the sun, and the world has taught us otherwise and taught the world otherwise.
So, as we witness the dismantling of democracy in America, it’s a reminder that we are not seen as equals. We are still coming off the plantation and trying to find our rightful place after having built this country with our bare hands, spending our entire lives in captivity.
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I’m the proud descendant of slaves on both sides of my family. On my mother’s side, my great-great-grandmother Rebecca was born a slave, and she had a relationship with the owner of the plantation her owner Captain Francis Pedro Alba, a Confederate War hero. If you Google him, you’ll read about him. Of course, we’re not there.
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On my father’s side, there was a woman named Mary Alice, also born a slave, and my grandmother, who’s still alive, talks about her visiting. She talks about how black people who were born free were treated differently from Black people who were born slaves, as if the slaves had a choice. So even at the very beginning of our coming off the plantation, we had inherited the hate and racism that built America.
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I say that to say, as they round up immigrants to bring them back to whatever country they came from, coming to America for a better life, they’re not rounding up white immigrants. They’re rounding up Black and Brown immigrants. Our children are seeing this even if you’re not talking about it. If you’re watching Instagram or TikTok or the news, which I have stopped watching, you’re going to see them dragging away people of color. I’ve not seen one image of a white person dragged away and put in jail because they’re in the country illegally.
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It’s clear what’s happening if you’re paying attention, and our young people are always paying attention, and they see things that we don’t know that they’re seeing, and they’re taking in this energy. It’s important for us to recognize that our mentorship now has to be in the context of the world so that we make sure that they are safe and have a sense of themselves that is strong enough to withstand what is to come.
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Hi, my name is Aubrey Lynch, and I’m here to talk to you about Black men and dance, what that journey is like, and some of the unique challenges that we face. I’m from a small town in Woodhaven, Michigan. I came to New York City with a dream to dance, and I was very, very blessed and lucky to be one of the last dancers chosen by Alvin Ailey for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. I traveled the world with the company. When Alvin passed away, Judith Jamison took over, and I got to work with that amazing genius of a dancer, artist, and director. I then moved on to film and television and did some work with music videos, movies, commercials, and all kinds of fun things. Then I booked a little Broadway show called The Lion King. I was in the original cast. I helped build the show. I was a dance captain, associate choreographer, and associate producer. I mounted the show 14 times around the world and really had the experience of a lifetime learning so much about people, artists, and different cultures, and privileged, lucky, and blessed to work with one of the biggest shows in the world.
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Then I went on to be Dance Director for the Harlem School of the Arts and was there for ten years, and took three dance studios, 160 kids, and no teachers. I wrote the curriculum, designed the program, and left there with a program of about 400 kids, and was promoted to the Chief Officer of Education and Creative Programs in charge of dance, theater, visual arts, and music. I wrote the curriculum for the whole entire school. I’m very, very proud of that. It was my life’s work putting all of those lessons together for those incredible young people.
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Then, of course, I went on to my current position, which is the Dean of Students and the Wellness Director, and the Director of ABT RISE for American Ballet Theater. That means I’m in charge of all of the student life of all the young pre-professional ballerinas. I also deal with the company’s DEI efforts. We cannot have strong, fortified mental health without real, true diversity, equality, and inclusion, and we can’t have true diversity, equality, and inclusion, particularly belonging and psychological safety, without strong mental health. They go together, and I focus on that intersection. I am very, very blessed.
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I also worked very, very hard. Don’t think anything was given to me. Whenever I rattle off my resume, it makes my head spin because I lived it and as I go through, gosh, it would have been 40 years I came to New York City, 40 years ago this summer, 1985, a young student with a dream, it’s incredible what’s happening now.
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Going back I was mentored and taught by Black pioneers people like Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell, the Director and Founder of a Dance of Harlem, Judith Jamison, Carmen de Lavallade, the woman who brought Alvin to his first dance class, Tally Beatty, Louis Johnson, George Faison, Dudley Williams, and the names go on and on and on in the dance world. These are my teachers, and they taught me things that I live by today. When I teach young people, when I talk about life, I am embodying their voices, and now that most of them have passed, the mantle has been handed down to my generation. It’s important for me to purposefully prepare young people to take on this mantle to ensure that even if our stories are taken out of books and they’re erased from history, our stories are told because they live in our bodies. They live in our dance. They live in our music. They live in our children. We have to remind them who they are, where they come from, who their ancestors were, and why they are a critical part of the human race.
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Alvin Ailey used to say, “The most important part of your dancing is your humanity,” and I apply that to everything. “The most important part of whatever you do is your humanity, is your love, and the grace that you have for other people. He said, “Dance is the ultimate in self-expression.” So the more you express your truest self, the better the world is because you’re in it. In rehearsal once, he said, “Tell me your life story in that phrase of movement.” The idea that you could tell your life story in eight counts of movement of choreography was a profound moment, and I’ve never forgotten that. In everything that we do, our stories are told whether they’re literally words on paper, or their music, dance, or the creations that other young people make.
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Judith Jamison said, “We want to extend your arms through the wall, through the windows, out across the Earth. You are bigger than your body. That was a moment. Carmen de Lavallade said, “There’s light coming out of your fingertips your, your head, your eyes, your feet, your toes.” Make sure you shine always, no matter what your situation. Keep that light shining to infinity. She also said, “When you speak, make sure you bite down on all the words.” It was kind of an acting technique she was teaching us, but she was really saying, make sure or you know you’re worthy. Make sure that you are heard. Speak humbly. Speak clearly. Speak proudly, but speak.
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This is how they talk to us. This is how they taught class. They were ripping off these incredibly profound life-reaffirming creative statements that made you feel like gods and goddesses. In fact, Alvin would say, “You’re gods and goddesses,” and we are, and I want to make sure our young people are hearing these messages from our ancestors so that they know they are gods and goddesses. They are an essential part of the universe, as important as the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass. We are Earth. We are humanity, and I learned that from them.
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So you fast forward and now I’ve traveled the world with Alvin Ailey, and now I’m running The Lion King and teaching The Lion King in fourteen cities around the world. I’m auditioning in South Africa, Australia, Germany, and Amsterdam, and it is heartbreaking when you meet the brilliance of these young people. I’m particularly thinking about a time I was having a conversation with a Black man from Guadalupe, from London, one from France, and one from Brazil. There was an African-American. There was a Black person from Spain and a Black person from, Dutch. There was also South African. This was an incredible conversation about being Black in the world, and the one thing that became clear. No matter what part of the world you’re in. No matter what your group is, when you add the layer of Blackness, it takes you to another category, to a category where you literally are getting the bottom of the barrel, and you’re looking up at the world, and the world is trying to look down on you. Even though our passion, our talent, and our ability stand at the top. Our music, our art, our passion, our creativity, our inventions. They’re all plain for the world to see, but we are gaslit by every place that we’re from.
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It was interesting talking to people from the Caribbean, some of whom didn’t understand the plight of the African-American. I tell them, you come from a culture where you have a history. You received your freedom much earlier than Americans, and so therefore the people around you, your leaders, your doctors, your nurses, your teachers, your community leaders, are all Black.
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So you grow up seeing these role models. In America, you don’t. You see stereotypes promoted, and then our leadership is mocked and called DEI hires, ignoring the brilliance that we bring to the table. When I had those conversations, we had some quite heated debates.
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One thing became clear. Okay, it is different. They come to America with the culture. We are inheriting the culture of America, where our constitution says that we’re less than a man and had to be amended so that we could be seen as equal. That’s a heavy load to carry for anyone.
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The Black Canadians I spoke to often felt like, although they mirrored America, the American experience, their issues were much more invisible. There are not these big urban centers of Black people like there were in America. So they’re spread out and they often are facing this kind of subtle and often brazen racism on their own, and it’s not talked about as much as their indigenous issues, which Canada has bravely faced quite, quite beautifully. They’ve got a lot of work to do, but at least they’re in a conscious state of reckoning.
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In America, we haven’t even made the reckoning yet about what we’ve done to Native Americans, what’s happened to Black people, and what’s happening now as our government creates executive orders that are directed at Black and Brown people.
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When you talk to South Africans, culture and race are not really about color. It’s about the language you speak. If you’re speaking Swahili or you’re speaking Zulu or Xhosa, you respond in your language so that you remind the person in front of you what tribe you’re from, and there’s pride in that. I was told by a South African, I’m not African because I have no language. That was kind of rude, but I got what he was thinking. It hurt me, but I got it. I didn’t want to have an argument and say, well, my ancestors were taken from Africa long ago, so whatever language I spoke is long gone. That’s not my fault.
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In any case, there’s a Westerner thing that happens, though. That was the most profound lesson I learned in South Africa. I was listening to all these languages being spoken, but when I came into the space, I was coming in as the American Westerner, and that carries its own stereotypes that I had to figure out how to navigate. That was pretty complicated and nuanced, and I’m still processing what I learned from that.
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When it comes to sexuality for our Black gay men from African countries or for the Caribbean, their lives are often very much in danger to the degree that I remember one young beautiful dancer that I found in this country, when he got the job in The Lion King, his mother told him do not come home. Don’t come home. This young boy didn’t for many, many, many, many, years. He eventually did go home, but it was many years later. I wrote letters of Asylum for him and about five other dancers I met all over the world, from Belize, from Jamaica, Nigeria, Zimbabwe. I really helped people escape. It was hard for me, hard. I was happy to help, but it’s hard to see so many people in fear of their lives for being who they are.
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So there are many dynamics that happen around the world, and I don’t have time to get into all of them, except one day maybe I’ll talk about each individual country and the experience that I had. I’m just reminded that in every conversation there was a challenge by being Black that whatever was going on in our lives whether it was finances, or accessibility, or sight, or hearing, whatever marginalized group that you were from, your Blackness added a weight to put us in a category that doubled, quadrupled, exponentially, our experience and our challenges. In every situation, when you add the layer of Black and Brownness, we suffer the most. We are all victims of colonialism and the slave trade, and every culture inherited that heinous ideology in a unique way, with their culture experiencing those moments all over the world was profound.
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So yes. I could be very angry. I think we could all be very, very angry, so I put my fury, my rage, my pain, my sorrow, my disappointment, into the work. I channel it into our young people. I’m blessed and privileged to have worked with so many beautiful young people of color and then help point the way and get out of their way and let them do what they do, create the magic that they create.
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I’m proud to have put over eleven kids on Broadway, film, and television, some of which are absolute superstars like Caleb McLaughlin, who is an incredible actor, singer, dancer, that I’ve been working with since he was eight or nine years old and I have so many that I’ve worked with and it’s beautiful to see them become the people that they’ve become.
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So to counteract all the energy whenever I taught The Lion King or taught class or was giving any kind of presentation, my personal rule was empowerment to make sure the people in front of me felt like they were seen so that young people, in particular, knew that someone leadership who had traveled, who had achieved all of these things, was seeing them, inside of them, and making sure they knew that they were seen and I really think people appreciated that.
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I believe that if a young person leaves your workshop your class, your, your dance class, and doesn’t feel better about themselves, then you failed. It doesn’t matter how many words they can rattle off, how many things they can memorize, how many pirouettes they can do. If they don’t feel better about themselves after being around you, we have failed as educators. At the very least, we should be purposefully presenting ourselves, purposely presenting our information, and even if it doesn’t land how we intended it to land, our intention should be to make sure that person knows that they are worthy human being and should and should and has a right to chase whatever dream that they have, and that you’ll be there for them if they need you.
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The stakes are big as they brand Black and Brown people as drug dealers and rapists and criminals. As they take African history out of education. As they dismantle DEI initiatives and affirmative action as if we’ve solved the problem. We have to make sure our kids are aware that they have to be better than everyone around them.
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By the way, there is no such thing as African-American history. There’s just American history. You really can’t tell American history without talking about Black people, because while they were inventing all kinds of clever things that Americans have created, the Black people gave them time to do that because we were in the field doing the work that they were not strong enough to do.
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So, how do Black men recover from all of this? What can we do besides the generality of let’s mentor them. What I did was, I purposefully would stand in front of the child and the parent and make sure they felt heard. I listened. Whenever a young kid was talking to me, I would kneel down to be at his level. Treat him as an equal. Give him room to have an input in the conversation. I always ask, “What do you need? What would you like to do?” and when they said they want to dance, I have them dance. When they said they didn’t, I didn’t make them. Right? I gave them some agency, and I negotiated with the parents what the kids wanted. I was in partnership with the parents, helping raise the child, and that was a beautiful, beautiful time.
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I told them I don’t care if you dance. I don’t care what you do, as long as you do, do something and feel proud of who you are, where you come from, know your ancestry. Know your history. Know the names that came before you. I would drop the names all the time, like Dudley Williams, Alvin Ailey, in these rehearsals that I would work with, and quote them. They taught me to pass on whatever knowledge I could, knowing that it’s not the things that you say. It’s what you do. It’s your body language. Your tone. Your eye contact. your energy. That’s what they’re taking in and I can only hope that when they find their place where I am, in 50 years, that they will be embodying some of those lessons whether they know where they came from or not, because quite often as young people or as adults, we don’t remember where the lessons come from, we don’t know who said them. It doesn’t matter as long as they’re there. It’s like building a cathedral. The designers will not live to see completed. You put a brick or a stone in place, and you pass it on to the young people that will come after you.
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The evil and hate I’m seeing on my notifications, I am not watching the news, is unsettling. It reminds me of when I was a kid watching the bullies get away with hurting me and other children. I remember once in particular, I was having a bit of an altercation with the kid who was bullying me, and my mom said, “You need to speak, stand up for yourself.” So I did. The teacher saw me defending myself. I looked like the aggressor. This is, of course, a white child, and she pulled me in front of the class. She sat the whole class down. This must have been third grade, I think, and she made me apologize to this boy in front of the class.
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I will never forget the humiliation I felt because no one cared what that boy did to me. They only cared what I did to him. I’m not sure what I did. I have just said something snarky to him. I didn’t do anything. I was too small to fight. I was tiny, but I certainly gave him a piece of my mind. I actually had to leave the school because this continued, and one day I took a chair and I destroyed the classroom.
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I don’t remember what happened next. I would imagine they called my mom. I had to go to the office with the principal, and we left. As I see the notifications of the horrors that our president is doing to America, I feel like that child 50 years ago, more than 50 years ago. I feel like that child watching the bullies get away with hurting people, good people, who just want a place in the sun, a chance to go after their dreams.
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The how we do it, yeah, we could work on the how and how to fix immigration and how to make sure DEI is equitable. All that. We can fix that. No one can deny that the work has to be done, and if you ask me, it’s kindness, respect, empathy, curiosity, and belonging. If we all did that, you wouldn’t need DEI. You wouldn’t need affirmative action. If you create belonging wherever you go, if you’re kind, if you are empathetic, put yourself in others’ shoes, we could get through this together. That’s not happening so we have to make sure that we’re talking to our young people in a way that is going to fortify them and instill in them an unshakeable confidence so that as they see these things and they’re getting all those subliminal messages, they know it’s not them. They’re not the problem. They are just witnessing the cruelty of humanity, and we can be pretty, pretty bad.
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So as we see the horrors pass across our phone, and social media, and the news, if you’re paying attention, we have to remind our young people that we are driven by our values. No matter what’s happening in the world, our value of love, kindness, self-respect, respect of others has to ring true. Do not fall prey to all of the lures that are sent to trap us. Stay true to your passion. Study. Train. Practice. Listen to your teachers, even the ones you don’t like. There’s always that. You have to take in as much information as you can.
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Listen to the wisdom of your elders, even the ones that annoy you. You have to do it because there’s information there that’s going to protect you in ways you cannot see now. We must continue to tell our stories and give young people the confidence to self-express, to express the parts of themselves that have no words. Through art and music and dance and theater, poetry, telling our stories and beautifully beautiful literal and abstract ways, so that our history is never forgotten because it’s in the very fabric of America, and this applies to all young people of every color.
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Every young person will eventually take on the mantle. To know their ancestors and it’s important for them to know who they are, where they come from, and why they are. No matter what your challenges or obstacles are, bring your A game and know that you may have to be better than anyone in the room just to be seen, to be in the game. That’s what I’ve always done, and unfortunately, it looks like that’s going to continue until we can call the shots, and that day is coming. That day is coming for sure. I might not live to see it, but I’m hoping that people watching this, we have a responsibility to care for each other and to build a world that is safe for everyone.
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So I’m wishing you the best. I’m wishing you strength and power and beauty and love and light and as Carmen de Lavallade said, “There is light coming out of your fingers, and your head, and your toes, and your eyes, your expression, your heart, you shine. Make sure you shine your light wherever you go.” You are worthy of any dream that you can imagine. All my love.
About the Author
Aubrey Lynch II has had a wide-ranging career, taking him from Woodhaven, Michigan, and an unfinished University of Michigan Chemistry degree, through a deep understanding of music, theater, and visual design. As Dean of Students and Director of ABT Wellness & ABT RISE with American Ballet Theatre, Mr. Lynch works with the entire ABT organization, mentoring students, managing student life, and pushing ABT’s belonging and inclusivity initiatives. He is developing a workshop series focusing on the emotional intelligence of pre-professional ballet dancers and facilitating their health programs. He danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as one of the last dancers hand-selected by Alvin Ailey and was a founding company member of Complexions Contemporary Ballet. He was an original cast member of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Disney’s The Lion King, acting as the production’s Associate Choreographer and then Associate Producer. Mr. Lynch was the Dance Director and Chief Officer of Education and Creative Programs for the Harlem School of the Arts, where he coached pre-professional children, leading eleven students to professional careers on Broadway and in film and television. Most recently, Aubrey has launched ROAR, an inspirational YouTube podcast @TheAubreyLynch, providing lessons for walking with life’s challenges.
References
Stock footage and images by Artlist-Licences owned by Aubrey Lynch
Permission granted from the Harlem School of the Arts to use all images of minors
All other images and videos are from the Aubrey Lynch personal collection
Images and Videos:
00:00:12.000 ABC News at Harlem School of the Arts
00:00:01:01.000 *Francis Pedro Alba-Photographer unknown
00:00:02:28.000 News clipping
00:00:02:30.000 News clipping
00:00:02:35.000 Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater-Photo by Jack Mitchell
00:00:02:40.000 Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater-Photo by Jack Mitchell,
Barry Martin’s Chelsea’s Bells, Nasha Thomas, and Aubrey Lynch II
00:00:02:50.000 Aubrey Lynch, owner-Modeling portfolio-Photographer unknown
00:00:02:56.000 Aubrey Lynch, owner-Photo by Jack Linholm
00:00:03:29.000 Aubrey Lynch, owner- Photo by Steve Schurer
00:00:04:57.000 Alvin Ailey-Photo by Jack Mitchell
00:00:04:58.000 *Arthur Mitchell-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:01.000 *Judith Jamison-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:02.000 *Carmen de Lavalade-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:06.000 *Talley Beatty-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:07.000 *Louis Johnson-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:08.000 *George Faison-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:09.000 *Dudley Williams-Photographer unknown
00:00:05:48.000 Carmen de Lavalade and Alvin Ailey- Photo by Jack Mitchell
00:00:06:01.000 Alvin Ailey’s Blues Suite- Photo by Jack Mitchell
00:00:06:08.000 Alvin Ailey’s Hermit Songs-Photo by Jack Mitchell
00:00:13:51.000 *Caleb Mclaughlin-Photographer unknown
00:00:14:03.000 *Caleb Mclaughlin-Photographer unknown
00:00:16:50.000 Kye Cooley-Permission from HSA- Photographer unknown
00:00:21:30.000 Video clip from Cosby Celebrates Ailey
00:00:21:37.000 Aubrey Lynch, owner-Modeling portfolio-Photographer unknown
*This image is used under the assumption of educational purposes, fair use, and the copyright owner has not been identified. All rights reserved to the copyright owner. If the licensed owner is known, please contact for appropriate credit.
Learn more below.
Note: The issues raised in Black Men in Dance-The Movement are drawn from Aubrey Lynch II’s life experiences. Although the materials listed below were NOT used to create Black Men in Dance-The Movement, the links below offer an opportunity for a deeper look.
More about Aubrey Lynch II:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheAubreyLynch
Francis Pedro Alba:
https://www.geni.com/people/Peter-Alba/6000000079799523581
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/43466970/peter-francis-alba
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Jack Mitchell:
The Lion King:
African Americans and Black Caribbean People:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5606333
Anti-Black racisms in Canada:
Race: South Africa vs. America: