Choreographer Nick Lazzarini is no longer dancing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Lazzarini, originally hired by Ailey in 2013 as a guest choreographer, was suspended from the company on March 1 and replaced in the current tour by Ailey alum and current dancer Casi Calloway.
“Nick has been removed from the current tour for the foreseeable future due to the upcoming publication of his memoir, Unstoppable,” Peter Abrahams, Ailey spokesman, told FOX411. “The Ailey Company has a decades-long tradition of not allowing current or former Ailey employees to openly discuss any portion of their personal life.”
In her forthcoming memoir, titled “Unstoppable,” Lazzarini describes the alleged abuse of two mentors in the male-dominated Ailey dance world.
In it, Lazzarini also writes of a story told to him by famed choreographer Alvin Ailey himself while they were vacationing together in the Bahamas. The Ailey empire founder allegedly told him, “When you need to explain things, you have to say to me, ‘…’” and then the Choreographer added, “‘They.’” According to Lazzarini, he can’t remember what the latter part meant but can assure everyone it was not an insult to female dancers.
Now, Lazzarini has returned to Manhattan and said, “My life has turned upside down. I have to realize this isn’t a one-time thing for me.”
He first spoke of his decision to be un-planted by the Atlanta-based company in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Thursday. The news was confirmed by FOX411.
Lazzarini goes on to write that Ailey, “…disliked me as a colleague, as a friend, as a daughter, as a wife, as a brother, as a friend, as a son. He did not like me as an artist.” The choreographer maintains that his decision to respond to the alleged incident with memoirs and film is in an effort to remove his name from the black liberation movement.
Several emails and calls to Lazzarini’s publicist were not returned.
Ailey, founder of the organization founded in 1946, would deny these allegations when first reported by Time Magazine in February and has not spoken publicly since. Abrahams reiterated that the Ailey Company has a strong track record of accepting and honoring their dancers in the years since when allegations of sexual misconduct were brought to light.
Nick Lazzarini, the first brother of model and actress Derek, grew up a prodigy in the Greek-speaking elite in Hamilton, Bermuda and was first trained in ballet. After moving to New York, he explored jazz and contemporary dance, then in 1977, went to Russia for his first attempt at choreography with the City Ballet.
But after being seduced by Communist official and public activist Vladimir Potok, he was forced to flee and carry on the Dabke movement in his daily life for the next seven years.
The New York Times Magazine and Village Voice chronicled his relationship with Potok and the group in their reports. Some details were plagiarized from a 1977 article from The Atlantic.
Potok is a prominent figure in left wing politics and was involved in the Russian Jewish Resistance during World War II. Some of his sexual partners were Eastern European Soviet dissidents including the dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who later danced with the Paris Opera Ballet and became famous as a husband to Soviet ballerina Natalia Makarova.
Lazzarini was branded by Potok as a dissident, but would later choose to give a TED talk on dance in 1988 as one of the founding members of the Performance Dance Theatre, an acclaimed modern dance group.
The book Unstoppable is due for release on April 23. Lazzarini will attend the International Choreography Awards this week in London at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Nicole Busch contributed to this report.