Why do you dance? Because you live it? To compete, to perform, to express yourself? In the Afro-Cuban folkloric tradition, dance is so deeply entwined with music, storytelling, and religion that almost everyone dances, and there's almost always a reason to be dancing. "In life, there are so many celebrations to dance about," says Noibis Licea, an NYC-based dancer and choreographer from Bayamo, Cuba, who graduated from the National School of Arts in Havana.
Every so often a great dancer transcends her own brilliance, somehow expanding its outer limit. Last week at City Center, Linda Celeste Sims, a member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 24 years, did just that in a rapturous performance of Ailey's 1971 "Cry," a 16-minute solo dedicated "to all black women everywhere - especially our mothers." This season Ms. Sims, 43, danced the work for the first time as a mother - she gave birth to her first child, Ellington, in May - and something shifted.
Khalia Campbell: Emotions flood through Khalia Campbell's every move. As "the umbrella woman" in Ailey's Revelations, her torso and arms ripple with joy. As a soloist in Darrell Grand Moultrie's Ounce of Faith, she turns heads with dancing that's smooth and silky, yet sharp and purposeful.
Learning Versatility, Summer by Summer: Courtney Celeste Spears. When Courtney Celeste Spears was young, she'd ask her family to skip the Christmas presents: "Just help me go to this intensive," she'd say.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Samantha Figgins will never forget the first time she danced Revelations wearing the small devices held in place by a wire loop over each ear. "I thought they changed the music," Figgins recalls, laughing. All of a sudden, she could make out individual voices in the opening choral number "I Been Buked." When she found herself on the left side of the first formation, she could hear her fellow dancers breathe, and during "Wade in the Water," she discovered a bass line that she never knew was there.
Masazumi Chaya, a beloved animating spirit of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre since 1972, first decided to retire in 1986. But Ailey asked him to stay on as an assistant to the rehearsal director, and so Chaya stayed, and stayed - through Ailey's death, two changeovers of artistic director, and several generations of dancers. Now, as Chaya finally follows through on his retirement plan, the company honors its associate artistic director with a tribute evening on Dec. 22, part of its five-week season at City Center.
After 48 years with the celebrated Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, both as performer and choreographer, Masazumi Chaya is hanging up his dancing shoes. The Japanese-American artist will start the new year by retiring as the modern dance company's artistic director. But the man known as "The Keeper of the Flame" to some colleagues is working until his very last day with the renowned dance troupe, whose members will celebrate his legacy with a special evening of performances on Sunday at New York's City Center. He got his nickname for preserving the New York City-based company's repertoire and for training generations of dancers through the past three decades.
Jamar Roberts, the first ever resident choreographer at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, joins us to discuss his first production in that role, "Ode."
For 47 years, Masazumi Chaya has overseen Alvin Ailey's dancers - and now he's ready to move on. Masazumi Chaya, a doctor and nurse's son from Japan, expected to go to medical school. But at 17, he took a jazz-dance class and started performing on TV shows there. By 21, he wondered just how good a dancer he really was. He wanted to test himself - so he went to New York.
Say you're a choreographer and you want to make a dance about gun violence - not a polemical piece but a mournful one. How might you express a grief that's personal and public, and whose source shows no sign of stopping? An obvious option: bodies on the ground. And sure enough, those appear in Jamar Roberts's "Ode," which had its premiere at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at City Center on Tuesday. "Ode" isn't obvious though. It's delicate, daring and heartbreaking.