WGN: Daytime Chicago’s Hosts, Tonya Francisco and Amy Rutledge sit down with Associate Director, Matthew Rushing, to talk about the upcoming engagement in Chicago at The Auditorium from April 24 – 26. Along with the interview, company members, Alisha Rena Peek and Renaldo Maurice performed an excerpt of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations and an excerpt of Frederick Earl Mosley’s Embrace.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater arrives in Boston April 30 for its annual visit, its 58th hosted by Vivo Performing Arts (formerly Celebrity Series of Boston) and its first with Artistic Director Alicia Graf Mack, the fourth artist to hold this role since the company was founded 70 years ago by Alvin Ailey (1931-1989). This year’s tour presents two world premieres: “The Holy Blues” (2025), created by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar with Samantha Figgins and Chalvar Monteiro; and “Difference Between” (2025), by Boston-born and Boston Ballet School-trained choreographer Matthew Neenan. The company will perform two programs over four days and conclude each performance with Ailey’s signature masterpiece “Revelations,” an anthem to resilience and joy.
The visionary and innovative Cuban-American dancer, director, and creator Maija Garcia is widely recognized for her outstanding and versatile multidisciplinary career in theater, film, television, music, and dance, among other areas. Recently appointed Director of the Capri Theater in Minneapolis, Garcia has collaborated with legendary figures such as Spike Lee and Bill T. Jones on acclaimed productions, including “Blackkklansman”, “CHI-RAQ”, Netflix’s “She’s Gotta Have It”, and the Tony Award-winning musical “FELA!”, presented on Broadway and internationally. With a focus on bringing history and culture to life through his projects, García now presents “Jazz Island”, his first work as part of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tour, which will arrive at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center from May 8 to 10.
Alicia Graf Mack, Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, on the beauty of spontaneity in Medhi Walerski’s Blink of an Eye, set to the solo violin sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach.
For nearly 70 years, the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has been showcasing Black talent and culture through dance. The troupe, which features Afro Latino talent and dance elements, is bringing its robust program to L.A. this week. Founder Alvin Ailey’s technical approach to dance combined modern dance, ballet and jazz — among other dance forms — in an attempt to blur the traditional boundaries of the dance world.
DC native Samantha Figgins returns to the district for 11 performances with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Warner Theatre, the first stop on a 20 city US tour. While Figgins has performed with the company for many years, this visit home will include her first performances as a choreographer. I caught up with Figgins about her dancing, her choreographic debut The Holy Blues, and why she’s as energized as ever to bring dance to her hometown.
“My roots are also in the Gospel church, the Gospel churches of the south where I grew up…holy blues—paeans to joy, anthems to the human spirit.” These words written by Alvin Ailey were the impetus for The Holy Blues, a collaborative choreographic endeavor by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and emerging dancemakers Samantha Figgins and Chalvar Montiero.
Cuban-American choreographer Maija Garcia made her debut with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater this fall with Jazz Island. Based on a folk tale from the book Black Gods, Green Islands, by actor-director-designer and all-around polymath Geoffrey Holder, it features Erzulie, Afro-Caribbean goddess of love, intervening in the affairs of young Bashiba, who is engaged, unhappily, to a young traveling man. Supplying the jazz in Jazz Island is a score by Trinidadian composer and trumpeter Etienne Charles
Artistic Director, Alicia Graf Mack speaks with Tamron Hall about the New York City Center Center season, from December 3 – January 4, 2026. Ailey dancers, Isabel Wallace-Green, Solomon Dumas, and Hannah Richardson perform “Wade in the Water,” from Alvin Ailey’s Revelations.
The goddess of love drifts in on waves and wind. When the choreographer Maija García was invited to make her first work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, this was the first image that came to mind. Then, a colleague directed her to “Black Gods, Green Islands,” a collection of Afro-Caribbean folklore written by Geoffrey Holder, the Trinidad-born artist, actor and dancer. The final story, “Goddess,” opens with almost the same image as the one in García’s vision. Taking this as a sign, she chose “Goddess” to adapt into dance.