Television is afraid of dance and for the most part now avoids it. Forty years ago, ballet – ostensibly the most rarified and remote of dance styles – nevertheless received not infrequent exposure on television variety series like the “Ed Sullivan Show” or “The Bell Telephone Hour.” Today, the prevailing situation is completely different. Only the most accessible dance styles, those embraced by monolithic corporate entertainment entities, are given any type of regular airing. PBS is practically the only television network interested in acknowledging any wider perspective to the art form. Although PBS has severely curtailed the amount of dance programming it generates or even airs second hand, it is still trying to produce some fresh product, to wit tomorrow night’s “Beyond the Steps: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.”

For the critic, reviewing a show like this provides a dilemma. I am glad that dance is being given any small screen exposure at all, and the company certainly deserves to be seen and celebrated.And it has every right to celebrate itself, which it does here without stridency. Nevertheless the safeness within which this special operates is not stimulating enough, nor does it do justice to the range of hooks one could use for the dance initiate – to whom these shows are obviously directed.

“Beyond the Steps” provides an introduction to the company that gives a very pretty high-resolution surface, but it is shallow. Populism – Ailey’s own as well as the company’s – is the theme, but sometimes the show’s homogenization makes it seem as if this show were a pitch not to the public at large, but to wealthy possible donors. The various key Ailey personnel who are interviewed or shown at work reveal only their most beguiling faces. There is no cinema verite: Nobody is shown with his or her public persona unmasked.

There are several themes: the personality and work of Ailey himself; the day-to-day functioning of the Ailey troupe; the making of its work “Love Songs,” choreographed in part by Ailey company director Judith Jamison; the company’s move into its gleaming new home on Ninth Avenue, and its recent tour to Russia, where it performed in St. Petersburg after a 35-year absence.

So far as an Ailey biographical profile is concerned, absent is any exploration or even acknowledgement of Ailey’s darker side. For a company that has throughout its existence been inseparable from a larger social-political landscape, there is only a glancing mention of the history of blacks within the larger dance or cultural context. Ms. Jamison does mention the severely restricted opportunities for black children to take ballet in post-World War II Philadelphia.

A recurring theme in all general media inspections of the dancer’s profession is physical pain. Physical tribulations are of course a daily reality to the dancer, even if something of a cliche as a subject. Ailey star Dwana Smallwood broke her toe, and in “Beyond the Steps” the viewer accompanies her to her doctor and she describes how devastating even the temporary loss of dance is in her life. But more illuminating is the ongoing anxiety that haunts the performer. “You’re only as good as the newest person that comes in. You pray that the next person that comes in doesn’t have what you have.”

All concerned glow with justifiable pride about the company’s new home. Denise Jefferson, director of the Ailey School, talks about the way the configuration of a physical space determines the performance generated within it. The company’s new studios “open our hearts as we dance. The ceilings are so high you never have to worry about a lift, or a jump, so the sky is the limit.”

We are told by Sharon Luckman, the company’s executive director, that it was the indomitable Ms. Jamison who initially proposed the daunting prospect of a new home for the company in Manhattan, which came to fruition, Ms. Luckman claims, as “the largest building dedicated to dance in America.” Ms. Luckman describes the street-level windows at 55th Street and Ninth Avenue that invite the community to watch classes or rehearsals in ground-floor studios – and hopefully encourage them to enroll in the classes that the school offers to the public.The motive is to “take the community and bring it into Ailey.” That’s all well and good, both admirable philosophy and good marketing, but I was left very interested in knowing how the funding was assembled. Would it have been impolite to reveal the blood, sweat, and tears of what it takes to raise money for the nonprofit arts in American today?

PBS/WNET, Channel 13, 8:00 p.m., June 21