This theater, for this city. New York City Center Theater celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday night. That milestone neatly coincides with the annual five-week Christmas season of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the theater’s first resident modern dance company, itself celebrating an anniversary this year: its 60th.
The Alvin Ailey Dance Company has been entertaining people of all ages for decades, and now, one performer is helping to pass the mantle to the younger generation. "Even hen she was a baby, she was bopping up and down," dancer Constance Stamatiou said. Six-year-old Savannah is literally following in the footsteps of her mother, who began performing with the highly acclaimed troupe in 2007. She had just finished her first year at college and did a summer program at Alvin Ailey. The rest is history.
This season’s luminous The Call marks Ronald K. Brown’s seventh work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 20 years — more than any other choreographer. But why not twice that? The 52-year-old Brooklyn native regularly pays homage to the company’s founder, yet it is his own eloquent, open-hearted west African-inflected idiom that has become the troupe’s lingua franca.
Modern dance is waning in popularity, and young people don't seem to feel as connected with the work anymore. So what's a 60-year-old ballet company like Alvin Ailey to do to seem limber again?
When Alvin Ailey and a small group of African-American modern dancers first took the stage at the 92nd Street Y in 1958, it was groundbreaking and revolutionary. Revelations captured the agony and triumphs of the African American experiences. Now six decades later, his multi-cultural dance company is still charting a new course in its 60th season at City Center.
Alvin Ailey's groundbreaking dance company is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a season at New York City Center. Take a step back through their sensational past productions.
There aren't many people left on earth who can speak to the spirit of Alvin Ailey - not in terms of his dances or the institution he created, but the man. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrates its 60th anniversary this season and along with that, the work of another choreographer who mercifully is on earth right now: Ronald K. Brown. Through his dances, he speaks to the spirit of Ailey, and for nearly 20 years now he has enriched Ailey's company with unaffected, soulful choreography that gives its dancers dimension and depth.
We celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, a jewel in Manhattan’s artistic crown.
When Alvin Ailey set out to start his own dance company in New York City in 1958, he likely had no idea his passion and call to dance would result in a nearly 85,000-square-foot performance center bearing his name and thousands of students entering its doors day after day, while company dancers traveled to perform his choreography on stages around the globe. He certainly couldn't have known his effort to create a safe and esteemed place for dancers from all walks of life would extend well past his 1989 death, some 30 years.
When Christopher Wilson, FCLC ’17, found out that he had made the company of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, he immediately called his mother, who screamed and dropped the phone. “It took, like, a good two minutes for her to come back to me, so I just sort of sat there, just listening to her, and I was also crying at the same time,” he said.