Sometimes I wake up in my hotel room in the middle of the night and wonder if it's all a dream - the rare locations, the lights, and the crowds pleading for encores. Am I really a professional dancer? Indeed, I remind myself before rolling over to fall back asleep...I am a profesional dancer with Ailey II!
Watching Renee Robinson perform the "umbrella" solo in Alvin Ailey's Revelations is to truly experience Ailey's legacy. Her regality, energy, and joy are reminiscent of a young Judith Jamison.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed 39 times in December to enthusiastic packed houses at New York City Center, but there was a special quality to the cheering with which an equally large - but significantly younger - audience responded one Thursday morning during the season.
Few dance companies carry the worldwide name recognition of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. And even fewer dance works boast the influential artistic legacy of Ailey's Revelations, which the New York TImes hailed as "modern dance's unquestionable greatest hit."
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.
Judith Jamison has an awful lot of which to be proud. Under her leadership, begun in 1989 after the death of choreographer Alvin Ailey, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has become one of the most popular and distinguished dance companies in the world.
Judith Jamison is leaving the post of artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater with a smile and laughter. On Sunday night the company ended its annual season at City Center with a tribute to her that lasted over three hours.
"I have come a long way from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania," observed Judith Jamison, retiring artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and American dance icon. "Yeah!" shouted back many in her adoring audience.
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.
Yannick Lebrun chosen by AAADT dancer Jamar Roberts, a 2007 "25 to Watch." I remeber him being this little, scrawny kid in The Ailey School - I mean, just like a pencil. He also did Ailey II, and I saw him perform 'Takademe' by Robert Battle. It was so astonishing because he has this really big facility and really wide range of movement in his limbs and extensions.