The Alvin Ailey company’s New Works program might be seen in some circles as dated, and it’s true that it is neither cutting edge nor modishly contemporary. Yet it rests on more perennial qualities that underpin the company’s enduring appeal: skill, craft, beauty and humanity, and beneath them an artistic aim that can reach up towards the sublime, out towards the world, or in towards the heart.
All eyes turned to Nasha Thomas as she stepped into the dance rehearsal. The room fell quiet. With a few words, the AileyCamp national director commanded the attention of dozens of students as she shared feedback with campers preparing for an upcoming performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in early August. Thomas continued making her rounds, observing ballet, modern, West African dance and a percussion class, offering thoughtful adjustments along the way. “Stagger your positions,” she told one group. “Practice once without music. Get used to dancing without your glasses. Don’t rely on seeing every step. Tuck in loose strings. Remove rubber bands from your wrists. Be ready before the music begins.” Individually, the corrections were small. Collectively, they revealed something larger: Excellence is built through dozens of little habits.
Christopher Taylor still carries Newark with him every time he steps onto a stage. He remembers summers filled with booming house music, crowded park festivals and long days spent dancing in the middle of circles of cheering adults. “My grandmother was a house head,” he said, naming DJs and artists like Black Coffee and Kenny Bobien he heard at home. “I grew up with house music blasting all day.”
Christopher Taylor did not discover dance in a studio. He found it after school in a middle school gymnasium in Newark, N.J., when the Ailey education program came to his campus and showed him something he had never seen before. Black people moving in ways that stopped him cold. He was 11 years old, and his entire understanding of what dance could be shifted in an instant. More than a decade later, Taylor is a dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, wrapping up the company’s national tour at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), the very stage where he once sat in the audience dreaming. Rolling out‘s Arts in Studio sat down with him to talk about the journey, the homecoming and what it means to carry a legacy.
By now, Natalya Blaine and her daughter Nasya have their routine down pat. Four days a week, Natalya wakes up, cooks lunch and dinner, then stores the meals in to-go containers as 17-year old Nasya packs up and gets dressed. They load their belongings into their car - the food, Nasya's dance shoes and clothes, Natalya's homework for her master's program - make a quick stop at BJ's for gas, call Natalya's mother to say a prayer, and are on the road by late morning.
Christopher Taylor will soon perform at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey, as part of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual season at the vaunted Garden State venue. For Taylor, the performance will be something of a homecoming because he’s originally from Newark, and he actually started his dance career in AileyCamp Newark’s summer program. He rose through the ranks, joining The Ailey School Junior Division, The Ailey School Professional Division and Ailey II, before making the jump (literally and figuratively) to the main company, according to his biography.
For Christopher Taylor, dancing in the street led to dancing on the stage. Taylor had a blast dancing in Military Park, he says, while growing up in Newark. Now, he makes his debut Wednesday as a member of Ailey II, where he takes the stage at Manhattan’s The Ailey Citigroup Theater, playing until April 3.