Town & Country - A Revelation on 55th Street
The life and legacy of Judith Jamison were celebrated on December 4 in New York City when Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater held an opening-night gala to kick off its season at New York City Center.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
VOGUE - Alvin Ailey’s Opening Night Gala Paid Tribute to the Late Judith Jamison
The world lost a great artist, but we did not lose her spirit,” said Phylicia Rashad of Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's late artistic director emerita. At last night's Opening Night Gala for the dance company, Rashad served as honorary co-chair alongside Gayle King and paid special tribute to Jamison: “Just as sure as if she was standing here, we feel Judith Jamison's strength and resolve, and we know what she would be saying. She would be saying ‘keep dancing, keep striving, keep teaching, keep reaching.’" And that, we certainly did.
The New York Times - Alvin Ailey Dance Chooses Alicia Graf Mack to Be Next Leader
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has chosen Alicia Graf Mack to be its next artistic director, it announced on Thursday. A former member of the company, Mack, 45, currently the director of the dance division at Juilliard, will take on her new role in July.
The New York Times - A Muse and a Leader Embodied Power and Poise
The ovation lasted for almost 10 minutes. The solo that prompted it was only six minutes longer. Before the premiere of Alvin Ailey’s “Cry” in 1971, Judith Jamison was hardly an unknown quantity. But after it, she was a singular sensation, a headliner, the embodiment of poise and power. From then on she was unofficially America’s most celebrated Black female dancer — maybe even the world’s.
The Guardian - Alvin Ailey: New Exhibition Celebrates The Life And Legacy Of A Dance Icon
Alvin Ailey was a momentous figure in American dance. One of his most substantial and lasting achievements was to transform ideas of what a modern dance company could be, collapsing distinctions between diverse worlds like concert dance, jazz and Hollywood entertainment. He was also a transformational figure for the Black community: the dance institutions that he built in his lifetime – the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center – have cultivated generations of Black dance talent while sharing the experience of Black people in America.
Observer - Edges of Ailey Brings Dance to the Whitney
At the edge of Manhattan, in an 18,000-square-foot gallery on the fifth floor of a bright asymmetrical building, is the first large-scale exhibition about the life and work of the groundbreaking Black American choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989). This show is a long time coming, both for Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator Adrienne Edwards (who has been working on the show for about six years) and for fans of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founded by Ailey in 1958 (I, for one, have been looking forward to it for months).
The New York Times - Alvin Ailey’s Silky Creatures Of The Night
The sun sets, the moon rises and New York City is reborn. The night was a source of fascination for the choreographer Alvin Ailey. He understood its power, how bodies could soften in its shadows. It’s a time when some people “become their real selves,” he wrote in his notebooks in reference to his dance Night Creature. It’s no accident that Ailey, the subject of Edges of Ailey, a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, choreographed a performance to open Studio 54 in 1977.
The Wall Street Journal - Alvin Ailey's Art On Sprawling Display
Edges of Ailey, curated by Adrienne Edwards with assistance from Joshua Lubin-Levy and CJ Salapare, which runs through Feb. 9, 2025, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, mates a full-floor, 18,000-square-foot gallery display with a program of over 90 live dance performances, classes and talks presented two floors below in the museum’s intimate theater. Its subject is the life, art and what its promotional materials call “adjacencies” of dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), whose career in modern dance led him to international renown.
Artnet - Dancer Alvin Ailey Comes Into Full Focus in Stunning, Genre-Blurring Whitney Show
A deep dive into the life and career of a dancer and choreographer might not seem like a natural fit for the Whitney Museum, but it turns out that its new exhibition on Alvin Ailey (1931–89), “Edges of Ailey,” feels perfectly at home at the New York institution.
The New York Times - Works Inspired By Wonders
Music’s in the air, and there’s painting and sculpture in imaginative variety as an art museum gives rare treatment to an ephemeral medium. With the spirited, sense-surround show called Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York art season gets off to an exuberant, enveloping, though puzzling start. The show is a major institutional tribute to the American choreographer and performer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989). It’s also a relatively rare example of a traditionally object-intensive art museum giving full-scale treatment to the ephemeral medium of dance.