Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s highly anticipated season at New York City Center is from December 3 – January 4, 2026. This year highlights the inaugural season of Artistic Director and former Ailey dancer, Alicia Graf Mack.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's holiday performances begin in about three weeks, with a new artistic director leading the way. Alicia Graf Mack fills the giant shoes of the late great Judith Jamison. Mack was once a principal dancer under Jamison. She talked to Eyewitness News about her new role, which she calls a full-circle moment, and her vision for the future of the treasured theater.
The famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has a new leader. Alicia Graf Mack is only the fourth artistic director of the groundbreaking dance company.
Uplifting Black voices, experiences, and successes have been at the core of EBONY’s legacy for 80 years. This year, as EBONY celebrates eight decades of dedication to the Black community, the 2025 Power 100 List continues that tradition by honoring Black artists, community crusaders, and leaders across industries.
Telemundo’s Yessi Hernández speaks with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancers Dandara Veiga and Leonardo Brito.
Last November, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater announced that Alicia Graf Mack would become its next artistic director. Graf Mack’s trajectory seems to have prepared her for this role. During a brilliant career as a dancer with both Dance Theatre of Harlem and Ailey, she acquired two academic degrees on the side, in history and arts management. After retiring from the stage, she went on to become the director of The Juilliard School’s Dance Division, where she has spent the last seven years thoughtfully expanding the august academy’s approach to dance training. Now, she will be returning to Ailey, where her term as artistic director begins on July 1. She will be only the fourth person to hold the position, after Ailey himself, his chosen successor, Judith Jamison, and the choreographer Robert Battle.
CBS News New York's Chris Wragge speaks with Samantha Figgins, AILEY dancer and co-choreographer of The Holy Blues.
The great dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Brooklyn-based Evidence dance company Ronald K. Brown has a familiar story that echoes generations of artists dating back to Alvin Ailey’s professional debut as a performer on the Brooklyn Academy of Music stage in 1957. His relationship to dance, his way into the artform that would define his life, begins with Ailey himself. “The story is that when I was in the second grade, I went on a school trip to see the American Dance Theater, and then I went home and I started making dances,” the Bed-Stuy product tells me on a Wednesday afternoon in late May. We are on the phone, but I am in a conference room in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on the far west side of midtown Manhattan. Brown skips ahead to the next crucial juncture in his Ailey lore, driving home the seismic, incalculable impact Ailey has had on the American modern dance landscape. “I was 21 years old and I was rehearsing at the Ailey school, and Mr. Ailey came and sat next to me and he asked, ‘Are you one of mine?’” And I said, ‘Mr. Ailey, I did not go to this school, but yes, I’m one of yours.’”
Dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater - Constance Stamatiou, Jacquelin Harris, and Samantha Figgins perform Cry in tribute to Judith Jamison on the Jennifer Hudson Show!
The late Judith Jamison, a transformative figure in modern dance at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, was honored with a resolution designating May 10 as Judith Jamison Day, an annual recognition of her artistic brilliance, cultural impact, and leadership. The date now stands as an annual tribute to a woman who reshaped the possibilities of performance and empowered generations of dancers after it was passed by the City Council on May 1.