For more than 60 years, the spiritual power of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s signature work has stunned audiences including Obama. Here, company members explain what it’s like to dance a masterpiece.
Mack, whom one student called an agent of change, wants to “create a place where people feel like themselves” — and a model for the professional world. When Alicia Graf Mack taught the final ballet class for students graduating in spring from the dance division of Juilliard, it was a gentle, valedictory session: a lot of laughter, inside jokes and memories, a few tears. She’s a warm, gracious teacher who sometimes calls herself Mama Mack, and she got a little teary herself.
“There is about her an aura of mysticism. She appears onstage, larger than life, more an apparition than a performer, compelling us to look upon her as we might a temple dancer—with a sense of religiosity, of awe.” Those were the opening lines of Olga Maynard’s November 1972 Dance Magazine cover story on Judith Jamison, then in her late 20s and at the height of her powers as a star performer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
NPR's Michel Martin speaks to Robert Battle, artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, about the company's 2023 tour, which explores themes of love and joy.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is based in New York, but we like to think of Atlanta as their second home. The world-renowned dancers have been coming to Atlanta every year since 1976, and they’ll return to the Fox Theatre to perform Feb. 16-19. Robert Battle is the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and he joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to talk about the troupe’s upcoming performances, including Ailey’s acclaimed work “Revelations.”
Survivors’ has new resonance in a period of widespread protests. As Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to New York for its winter season, it will perform Revelations, of course, as well as a world premiere from in-demand choreographer Kyle Abraham. But it will also feature a work that has not been seen for more than 30 years: a wrenching tribute to Nelson and Winnie Mandela titled Survivors.
MANHATTAN, New York (WABC) -- The Alvin Ailey Dance Company kicked off their holiday season in grand fashion Wednesday night with a special benefit performance. New works and returning favorites are on the program at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. There's even a romantic duet dance to the music of "Softly as I Leave You," part of a routine called "Nine Sinatra Songs."
Steve Adubato talks with Robert Battle, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Artistic Director about Alvin Ailey’s extraordinary legacy, past and present forces that inspire Mr. Battle, and the ability of the arts to empower social justice.
Odds are, your dance students’ Instagram feeds are filled with images of professionals showing off their 180- degree penchés or demonstrating their highest extensions. It’s enough for a student to come to equate the length of their lines with the quality of their dancing—after all, dancers so often hear “long lines” as something to strive for.
Robert Battle was around 13 years old when he first saw dancers perform a work by the pioneering Black choreographer Alvin Ailey. “It was a revelation,” he recalls. As a bullied child with artistic ambitions, he found it dazzling to see people who looked like him earn applause for telling the story of the African-American experience through movement.