ISABEL WALLACE-GREEN (Houston, TX) began her dance training at Houston Ballet Academy where she studied for nine years. She graduated summa cum laude from the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance with a double major in Dance and African/African American Studies. She performed with New Chamber Ballet, Urban Souls Dance company, and was an ensemble member of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Wallace-Green joined DBDT: Encore! before joining Dallas Black Dance Theatre in 2021. While living in Texas, she partnered with University of Houston and Texas Southern University art museums to premiere her first solo show, Resilience. Wallace-Green joined the company in 2023.
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.
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.
