Alistair Butler

From his NY Times Obituary, September 11, 1992

Alistair Butler, a former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and a performer with other modern-dance troupes, died on Monday at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. He was 42 years old and lived in New York City.

He died of AIDS-related illness, said Sylvia Waters, the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, the Ailey organization’s second company.

Mr. Butler was a native of Nassau, the Bahamas, and studied dance there with Hubert Farrington. He attended Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala. He joined the Ailey Repertory Ensemble in 1976 and was a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1977 to 1981. He was described in 1978 by Anna Kisselgoff, the chief dance critic of The New York Times, as “a tall, gangling and superbly elegant dancer,” and one of his most memorable roles was that of the sinister drug dealer in Mr. Ailey’s “Flowers,” a dance-drama about a doomed pop star.

In recent years, Mr. Butler appeared with the companies of Kathryn Posin and Jennifer Muller and in 1990 he was in the cast of “Endangered Species,” a multi-media work presented by Martha Clarke at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.