It's been an eventful year for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. After the company's annual spring stand at Lincoln Center, it staged a string of summer performances in Paris at the Les Etes de la Danse International Dance Festival.
The inspiring new children's picture book My Story My Dance is based on the life of Robert Battle, the Artistic Director of the world renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the most popular dance companies in the world, touring regularly to major theaters across the United States and internationally. But on Thursday, the company will have the largest audience in its half-century-plus history, appearing in over 600 U.S. movie theaters as part of the Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance series.
TODAY contributor Lilliana Vazquez gets a sneak peek into The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to experience what the life of a professional dancer is like. The famed dance company even teaches her how to bust a move or two.
In June, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed over a dozen works at Lincoln Center. Now four of those performances - "Chroma" by Wayne McGregor; artistic director Robert Battle's "Takademe"; "Grace" by Ronald K. Brown; and Alvin Ailey benchmark "Revelations" - can be relived in theaters Oct. 22 with additional material, including interviews with dancers and Battle.
Courtney Celeste Spears - Audra Danielle Noyes is a young designer, having made her way nearly straight from her studies at Savannah College of Art and Design to Paris, where she cut her teeth at Lanvin and John Galliano. And so her Spring précis was one no doubt informed by her own experiences, which delved deeply into the metamorphosis of a young woman.
After countless hours in rehearsal, the stage can sometimes feel like a foreign country. Mirrors are replaced with blackness, your periphery is filled with light, and the floors, spacing and even the rosin feel different.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is legendary and this New York based dance group are back in South Africa after 17 years! From a fabled New York City performance in 1958, led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African-American modern dancers, the company has gone on to perform to 25 million people.
As you enter the theatre, you can already feel the electricity in the air. In the audience are many students and participants in dance groups, professional dancers, dance teachers and dance aficionados eagerly awaiting a performance by one of the world's leading and most revered dance companies: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The critically acclaimed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company makes a historic return to South Africa for the first time in 17 years. Not only will they be performing two spectacular programmes in Johannesburg and Cape Town throughout September, they are also engaging local organizations and aspirant dancers with outreach programmes.