Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has officially kicked off its holiday season at New York City Center. Choreographer Hope Boykin, who was a principal dancer for the company, is premiering her new work.
The sun sets, the moon rises and New York City is reborn. The night was a source of fascination for the choreographer Alvin Ailey. He understood its power, how bodies could soften in its shadows. It’s a time when some people “become their real selves,” he wrote in his notebooks in reference to his dance Night Creature. It’s no accident that Ailey, the subject of Edges of Ailey, a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, choreographed a performance to open Studio 54 in 1977.
As a retrospective opens at the Whitney Museum, New York, writers, curators and those close to the choreographer explore his vision to transform American dance
The Whitney Museum of American Art just previewed the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences and enduring legacy of artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey. CBS News New York's Dave Carlin shows us some of the highlights.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been entertaining Chicagoans for generations, and their impact has inspired countless of our dancers; in fact, some even go on to join the ensemble.
Back in 2001, Solomon Dumas’ mother was listening to the car radio when she heard an interview with some of the dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Her son had planned to enroll in theater camp, but after hearing about AileyCamp — a summer dance program for youth — she decided to enroll him there instead.
When 31-year-old professional dancer Coral Dolphin was 5 years old, she saw the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Company perform at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Dolphin, who is from South Central, remembers feeling a sense of joy and excitement to see dancers perform the late world-renowned Alvin Ailey’s magnum opus Revelations in person.
Houston-born dancer and arts educator Isabel Wallace-Green vividly recalls seeing a performance of Alvin Ailey’s landmark 1960 dance work Revelations as a child, peering over a high balcony in Jones Hall. “The dancers were pretty small!” laughs Wallace-Green, who nevertheless was captivated, especially by a section in Revelations titled “Wade in the Water,” where translucent white, cobalt, and aquamarine cloths are stretched across the stage to evoke baptismal waters and — for African American slaves — the riverbed as a pathway to freedom. “I’d never seen anything like that.”
This March, audiences in Houston will have the opportunity to experience a historic dance company and a historic work of art. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was founded by its namesake, dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey, in 1958. Soon after, drawing upon music from gospel, spirituals, and blues, he started creating a work that evoked childhood images of his family and of attending church in Rogers, Texas, which he called “blood memories.” The result was his iconic work, Revelations, that premiered in New York in 1960. In over six decades, the work has been performed all over the world. In 1968, it was part of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies and has been presented numerous times at the White House.
The famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is performing at The Kennedy Center through Sunday, bringing classic and new works to the stage. The company features more dancers from the D.C. area than any other place in the country. News4’s Jummy Olabanji spoke to one of the company’s dancers, Michael Jackson, Jr., about giving back to the students at his D.C. alma mater, Duke Ellington School of the Arts.