Since Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater began rolling out its online programming in March, I've been waiting for Ailey's always uplifting "Cry" to make an appearance. It arrived, approximately, just in time for Mother's Day. Ailey created this bracing 16-minute solo in 1971 as a birthday present to his mother, dedicating it to "all black women everywhere - especially our mothers."
It’s a simple photograph: a young man staring directly into the camera, arms folded. In the image captured in 1962, dance maestro Alvin Ailey looks defiant. Rhea Combs also sees something else when she looks at the black-and-white image. To her, the fact that photographer Jack Mitchell captured the performer shirtless is a visual metaphor, as if Ailey is telling the viewer, “I’m just baring my chest to the world and giving my all,” Combs said.
Robert Battle has been charged with continuing Alvin Ailey's formidable legacy, bringing mesmerizing, educational dance to audiences around the world.
Set to spirituals, gospel songs and blues, Alvin Ailey’s modern dance masterpiece "Revelations" was first performed in 1960. It was unlike anything audiences had seen before, and since then it’s been performed continuously around the globe. On this edition of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe speaks with Iowa native Ronnie Favors of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater about her journey through modern dance and the troupe’s upcoming Iowa performance.
Judith Jamison is one of the most accomplished modern dancers and choreographers of all time. After joining the @Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1965, she achieved international fame and went on to earn the Kennedy Center Honor and a National Medal of Arts. Although she is now the Artistic Director Emerita at Alvin Ailey, to up and coming Ailey dancers like Khalia Campbell, she is simply Ms. Jamison. In this episode of Thank You Notes, Khalia reads a thank you note to Ms. Jamison.
Modern dance impresario Alvin Ailey once asked photographer Jack Mitchell to shoot publicity images of his dancers for their next performance without even knowing the title of their new work. Seeing “choreography” in the images Mitchell produced, Ailey leapt into an ongoing professional relationship with Mitchell. “I think that speaks to the trust that they had in one another,” says Rhea Combs, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Ailey “knew it would work out somehow, some way.” This partnership, which began in the 1960s, led to the production of more than 10,000 memorable images, and the museum has now made those photos available online.
When the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre returns to Atlanta each year, it’s a joyous occasion like a family reunion, if your relatives happened to be brilliant dancers. The ensemble will perform at the Fox Theatre from Feb. 20-23. Ailey Artistic Director Robert Battle and choreographer Donald Byrd will speak at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights on Thursday, Jan. 16 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The event, “Greenwood & Stories From The Soil: Reveal, Remember, Reconcile” is free and open to the public. Battle and Byrd joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes to talk about the dance.
Masazumi Chaya, a beloved animating spirit of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre since 1972, first decided to retire in 1986. But Ailey asked him to stay on as an assistant to the rehearsal director, and so Chaya stayed, and stayed - through Ailey's death, two changeovers of artistic director, and several generations of dancers. Now, as Chaya finally follows through on his retirement plan, the company honors its associate artistic director with a tribute evening on Dec. 22, part of its five-week season at City Center.
After 48 years with the celebrated Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, both as performer and choreographer, Masazumi Chaya is hanging up his dancing shoes. The Japanese-American artist will start the new year by retiring as the modern dance company's artistic director. But the man known as "The Keeper of the Flame" to some colleagues is working until his very last day with the renowned dance troupe, whose members will celebrate his legacy with a special evening of performances on Sunday at New York's City Center. He got his nickname for preserving the New York City-based company's repertoire and for training generations of dancers through the past three decades.
For 47 years, Masazumi Chaya has overseen Alvin Ailey's dancers - and now he's ready to move on. Masazumi Chaya, a doctor and nurse's son from Japan, expected to go to medical school. But at 17, he took a jazz-dance class and started performing on TV shows there. By 21, he wondered just how good a dancer he really was. He wanted to test himself - so he went to New York.