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.
A day before the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater begin the South African leg of their international tour, the company's dancers taught a master class in Johannesburg's historic Soweto township on Wednesday. The dance company last visited South Africa 17 years ago, soon after the end of apartheid.
Eight professional dancers discuss the offstage interested that help them recharge.
She started dancing at the age of three and that was only because her mother went to a Target store and picked out a ballet outfit just to see how her toddler would look in it. For Courtney Celeste Spears, it's like she never took off the leotard.
Dancers showed off their skills during their end-of-camp performance in the Bronx. After six weeks of practicing, more than 100 campers from the Alvin Ailey Dance Camp performed at the Hostos Community Theater.
Courtney Celeste Spears - Every year, the Princess Grace Foundation honors a few lucky members of the arts community. Getting a Princess Grace Award (which comes with a generous grant) is like joining one of the most elite clubs around—a club that includes David Hallberg, Tiler Peck, Mike Minery, Gillian Murphy, Kyle Abraham, Drew Jacoby and Isabella Bolyston.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will present the first world premiere from Robert Battle since he became the company’s artistic director. That premiere is part of the troupe’s coming season, which will include two other premieres, of Kyle Abraham’s “Untitled America: First Movement” and Ronald K. Brown’s “Open Door.” The season runs Dec. 2 through Jan. 3 at City Center.