DC Modern Luxury - Music in Motion
Alicia Graf Mack (@aliciagrafmack) remembers the first time she understood what it meant to be a dancer. She wasn't on a stage or in a studio, but in the living room of her childhood home in Columbia, Md.
The Ailey Organization
Washington Life Magazine - Alvin Ailey's 25th Annual Gala
Talent and Vision: With a repertoire that features nearly 300 pieces by over 100 choreographers, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has graced stages in more than 70 nations across six continents and has been celebrated as a "Vital American Cultural Ambassador to the World" and Ailey did not disappoint the packed Kennedy Center Opera House audience during an extraordinary one-night-only gala performance, followed by an evening soiree at the Nations Gallery.
Modern Luxury DC - On The Scene: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Gala
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's 25th annual Washington, DC Gala Benefit took center stage during the Company's week-long engagement at The Kennedy Center, celebrating Black History Month with an evening of artistry and impact. A standout on the DC social calendar, the gala drew nearly 500 guests and raised over $1.2 million to support Ailey's regional initiatives, including new productions, youth education programs and scholarships for local students to train at The Ailey School in New York City.
Interview - “If You Can Walk, You Can Dance”: Inside the Whitney Museum’s Alvin Ailey Retrospective
In 1949, as legend has it, Alvin Ailey, then a young gymnast, followed school buddy and fellow future dance icon Carmen de Lavallade to the famed Lester Horton “Dance Theater” on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. It was a simple gesture that would lay the groundwork for the future of American concert dance. After Horton’s unexpected death, Ailey took over the Horton company for a while before starting the eponymous Alvin Ailey Company in New York, forming a beautiful, long and deeply intersectional lineage that incorporated dance, art, and innumerable interconnected histories culminating in the very first exhibit of the archival record of the Alvin Ailey Company, a show five years in the making and currently on view at The Whitney Museum of American Art.
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.
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 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.