Share

Coast-to-Coast Performances Feature the Company’s Extraordinary Dancers in the Season Premieres
CENTURY from Amy Hall Garner and Me, Myself and You by Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish 

Other Highlights Include New Productions of Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream, Jamar Roberts’s Ode, Hans van Manen’s Solo and a special Ailey Classics program.

After an acclaimed 65th Anniversary season launch in New York City, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – beloved as one of the world’s most popular dance companies – will continue to grace stages during a 21-city United States tour starting January 25 in Atlanta and continues coast-to-coast to cities like Washington, D.C., Miami, Boston, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, before culminating with a Mother’s Day performance in Newark on May 12. The passionate spirit and extraordinary technique of Ailey’s dancers will be showcased in a diverse repertory of new works, repertory favorites, and Ailey classics.

The tour will include two season premieres specially commissioned for Ailey, Amy Hall Garner’s first work for the Company, CENTURY, and former Ailey dancer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish‘s duet Me, Myself and You. CENTURY is a deeply personal piece inspired by Hall Garner’s grandfather on the eve of his 100th birthday. Taking a cue from his spirited essence and set to the music of Ray Charles, Count Basie, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and more, CENTURY is a celebration of life, resilience, and joy. Me, Myself and You is a dreamlike dance about reminiscence. Set to Damien Sneed and Brandie Sutton’s rendition of “In A Sentimental Mood,” it conjures the memories of love and passion of a woman who is asking herself if she should let go or forge ahead.

New productions this season include Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, set to music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, and War. A work that contributes to the 65th Anniversary theme of paying tribute to the women of Ailey, Dancing Spirit evokes the elegance, dignity, and generosity of legendary Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison. Other new productions are Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream, an audacious, non-stop piece with movement that is abstract but steeped in meaning that mirrors life’s boisterous waves; Jamar Roberts’s Ode, a meditation on the beauty and fragility of life in a time of gun violence, set to Don Pullen’s Suite (Sweet) Malcolm (Part 1 Memories and Gunshots) with an all-female cast; and the seven-minute tour-de-force Solo by Hans van Manen, the internationally celebrated choreographer long associated with the Dutch National Ballet.

This season’s beloved Ailey Classics program highlights a selection of repertory spanning the breadth of Mr. Ailey’s rich catalog, including excerpts of Memoria, Night Creature (sections 2&3), Pas de Duke (1st song), Masekela Langage (Morolo), Opus McShann(Gee Baby), Opus McShann (Doo Wah), Love Songs (A Song for You), For ‘Bird’ – With Love (A Night in Tunisia), Hidden Rites (Of Love), For ‘Bird’ – With Love (Bird Lives).

Performances of Alvin Ailey‘s must-see American masterpiece Revelations will inspire audiences in every city on the tour. Since its creation in 1960, Revelations has been seen by more people around the world than any other modern dance work, moving audiences with its powerful storytelling and soul-stirring music and evoking timeless themes of determination, hope, and transcendence. Springing from Ailey’s childhood memories of growing up in the south and attending services at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Texas, Revelationspays homage to the rich cultural heritage of the African American community and explores the emotional spectrum of the human condition.

Additional Tour Activities
The Ailey Organization continues its mission of using dance to educate young people through special activities, including master classes, student performances, lecture-demonstrations throughout the tour, innovative curriculum-based residencies for public school students, and AileyDance for Active Aging workshops for adults 50+. The Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approachresidency uses Alvin Ailey’s signature work as the inspirational framework for a comprehensive study of language arts, social studies, and dance. The innovative program actively engages participants in a process of reflecting, discussing, creating, performing, and assessing, while exploring the life story of Alvin Ailey and Revelations. In conjunction with the tour, residences are being implemented in Atlanta, Auburn, Los Angeles and Miami. In addition, students from AileyCamp— a free summer program that helps youth reach their full potential— will experience the magic of the Company’s live performances. The award-winning program celebrating its 35th birthday is operating in 10 cities across the country: Atlanta, Baltimore, Berkeley/Oakland, Chicago, Kansas City (KS and MO), Miami, New York City (Bronx), Newark, and Seattle.

The Ailey School, the official school of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater offering world-class dance training to students ages 3-25, will conduct auditions for the 2024-2025 academic programs as well as the 2024 summer intensive at tour cities including Atlanta, Boston, Birmingham, Baltimore/DMV area, Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston. The mission of The Ailey School is to make dance accessible to outstanding students through a curriculum of rigorous and diversified dance training. Nearly 80% of current Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater members received their pre-professional training from The Ailey School. For further information regarding the audition schedule, please click here.

Ailey II, the next generation of dance providing a bridge between The Ailey School and the professional dance world, will mark its 50th anniversary of bringing “off-the-charts energy” to the stage by embarking on a world tour from January 20 – May 19, inspiring audiences from Rotterdam, Netherlands to Kansas City, Missouri. Click here for 2024 tour schedule.

In conjunction with the tour, Ailey Extension will also step out of New York City and into select cities across the country to offer dance workshops to teens and adults of all backgrounds and levels. Designed to expand Alvin Ailey’s life-long commitment of bringing dance to everyone, Ailey Experience workshops teach students the rich history of Ailey’s signature style, which changed the perception of modern American dance around the world. From January through August, former Ailey dancers and world class instructors will lead Ailey Experience workshops in several cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Click herefor more information. Meanwhile, audiences around the world can get moving with Ailey Extension’s daily “real classes for real people” in a variety of dance and fitness techniques either online or in-studio at the Joan Weill Center for Dance – New York’s largest building dedicated to dance –  please visit alvinailey.org/extension.

The capstone to the 65th anniversary season will be Edges of Ailey, the first large-scale museum exhibition to reflect on the life, work, and legacy of visionary artist Alvin Ailey, in collaboration with Whitney Museum of American Art. Presented in the Museum’s 18,000+ square-foot fifth-floor galleries, this multifaceted presentation encompasses a multimedia exhibition, daily performance program, and scholarly catalogue to offer a richly layered experience for understanding the artist anew.

In 1958, Alvin Ailey and a small group of dancers took the stage in New York and forever changed American dance and culture. One of the country’s groundbreaking greats, his Company earned a reputation as one of the finest international ambassadors of American culture, promoting the uniqueness of the African American cultural experience and the preservation and enrichment of American modern dance. 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater