When you're offered a chance to take a class with Judith Jamison, you don't say no.The company's beloved artistic director emerita rarely teaches open classes. But to celebrate the legacy of Alvin Ailey on what would have been his 87th birthday, she gave a special two-hour workshop at the Ailey Extension on Friday night.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is reviving its production of Shelter to highlight homelessness in New York City.
Two productions from the 1980s returned to the repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last week, in refurbished form. The new iterations of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's "Shelter" (1988) and Talley Beatty's "Stack-Up" (1982), par of the company's five-week City Center season, proved a study in contrasts of how dances can weather the passage of time.
Robert Battle tells AOL Build about his calling in life and having Judith Jamison reveal he was the new leader of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
"I take it almost like a mission," Yannick Lebrun of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater said of performing "Sinner Man" from "Revelations," Ailey's 1960 masterpiece set to African-American spirituals. " 'Sinner Man' is a very powerful, propulsive section of 'Revelations' that shows who we are as Ailey men, but it definitely also has a deeper story: You're running for your life."
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's 'Shelter,' a work about homelessness, speaks strongly to the anxieties of the moment.
In 1960, America was in the midst of a social transformation. The Supreme Court had ruled "separate but equal" unconstitutional six years prior, but the country's response was slow and turbulent as desegregation incited violent responses. Surrounded by powerful civil rights momentum, a 29-year-old Alvin Ailey created an ode to the resilience of the human spirit: Revelations.
Yes, she's small, but the word "mighty" doesn't even begin to get to the root of Linda Celeste Sims' startling magnetism. She joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1996 and now, at 41, it's as if her luminous dancing has entered another realm.
Elaine Wynn admits she knew nothing about dance the first time she saw the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. "It made something come alive in a way for me," Wynn recalls. "I saw the extraordinary work of the brilliant Alvin Ailey and I thought, look at this unique, new, American, authentic dance form. I was inspired, and from then on I tried to find the company whenever I could."