In the midst of new chapters beginning and old ones ending in my career, I couldn't think of a more appropriate question to ask myself than why I dance. The last couple of years have been extremely challenging emotionally and physically. Having to adjust to a management position while maintaining my body as a dancer at 38 is no joke!
At the Ailey Citigroup Theater last November, Dance Magazine honored four dance icoms for their enormous gifts to the community: Deborah Jowitt, Pilobolus, Irina Kolpakova, and Matthew Rushing.
This has been a year of big transitions for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: the naming of Judith Jamison's successor, Robert Battle, the death of Ailey School director Denise Jefferson and longtime company dancer Matthew Rushing being appointed rehearsal director this past June.
Matthew Rushing moves like butter. He blends beautifully in any group, but as a soloist has a presence that simply rocks. During his 18-year tenure at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, he has shone in such works as Ailey's Revelations, A Song for You, Blues Suite, Pas de Duke, Reflections in D, to name only a few.
This week Alvin AIley American Dance Theater returns to BAM for its longest engagement there to date.
In the professional dancer's life, which is always circumscribed by the realities of aging, a sustained injury strikes some performers as a death sentence.
Dancer Matthew Rushing has been with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since 1992, but he has only recently started spreading his wings as a choreographer.
"We're about to twirl your socks," Judith Jamison, artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, announced to the Kennedy Center Opera House audience on Tuesday from the stage, flashing a grin to dazzle the upper tier. "All right?"
Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes. The giants of the Harlem Renaissance loom large in "Uptown," Matthew Rushing's new work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
At a recent rehearsal for his new work at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the choreographer Ronald K. Brown didn't tell the dancers what they were doing wrong; he showed them, illustrating the silky, particular undulations of his movement by quietly slipping next to each one and dancing.