Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is the African American dance company that popularized modern dance around the world. Really. It is the “American Cultural Ambassador to the World” (U.S. Congress). AAADT is in residence at New York City Center. Ballet is considered the pinnacle of dance, but Ailey is the equal of any ballet company.
Ailey II is its second company, but dances as well as many first companies, and is an incubator for talent across the performing arts.
Ailey Studios is one of New York’s leading dance schools. You can study many forms of dance at social, amateur, and professional levels. Ailey Citigroup Theater is the dance theater at Ailey Studios. Fordham University in The Bronx has an Alvin Ailey BFA Program that produces great dancers.
In addition to beautiful dancers and masterful choreography, Alvin Ailey companies have a spiritual dimension from the experience of being African American. They are also a home for great Afro-Latin dancers. In African Diaspora tradition, dance is how we pray, and every Ailey performance is a revelation. 🇺🇸
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II in New York City
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presents a Winter season in November/December in residence at New York City Center in Midtown, and a Summer season at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center, although the 2024 Summer Season is at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). They also perform in the BAAND Together dance festival of New York City’s leading dance companies at Lincoln Center in July.
APRIL
Ailey II celebrates the Company’s 50th Anniversary of African American modern dance; at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, Manhattan; from Tuesday-Sunday, April 9-14, 2024. Curtain chat, Wednesday, April 10. joyce.org 🇺🇸
MAY
African American Modern Dance
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presents three programs of modern and contemporary dance; in Prudential Hall at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, New Jersey; from Friday-Sunday, May 10-12, 2024. From $25. njpac.org 🇺🇸
JUNE
African American Modern Dance
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs African American modern dance; in the Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; from Tuesday-Sunday, June 4-9, 2024. From $35. bam.org 🇺🇸
SEPTEMBER
Art of an African American Modern Dancer
“Edges of Ailey,” the first large-scale museum exhibition about the life, work, and legacy of Alvin Ailey, founder of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; is at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District; from September 25, 2024 through February 2025. whitney.org 🇺🇸
Dancing the 92nd Street Y Brings Modern Dance Companies Limón, Martha Graham, and Ailey II Back Home
92ND STREET Y, Upper East Side, Manhattan ~ Legendary modern dance companies dance legacy works and new choreographers Omar Román De Jesús, Jamar Roberts, and Hope Boykin. 🇺🇸 🇲🇽 🇵🇷
World Ballet Day 2023 Takes You Behind the Scenes at the World’s Leading Ballet Companies
STREAMING, November 1, 2023 ~ See some of the world’s most famous dancers, in the world’s most famous ballet companies, backstage at some of the world’s most famous theaters.
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New York Venues
- 92nd Street Y, New York
- Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
- David H. Koch Theater
- Joyce Theater
- Lincoln Center
- New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC)
- New York City Center
- Whitney Museum of American Art
Founded in Greatness
Alvin Ailey Jr. was born in Rogers, Texas in 1931. 1930s Texas was another world. Ailey often choreographed from his childhood memories. He founded the Company in 1958. It first performed at the 92nd Street Y which was a modern dance incubator and still is. As an American ambassador for the U.S. State Department, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater popularized modern dance around the world.
Ballet is considered the pinnacle and science of dance. Ailey dances at the highest level in every dimension. It is the equal of New York City’s world-class ballet companies, just in modern and contemporary dance.
There is something deeply spiritual about Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater that we haven’t seen in any other dance company. Ailey’s “Revelations” (1960) is the Company’s signature masterpiece. It’s a reflection of Ailey’s childhood memories of attending Mount Olive Baptist Church near Fort Worth, Texas. The piece eloquently expresses that life is a mix of joy and pain, but always tempered with HOPE.
Some Ailey dancers became dance stars of their generation and mentors of the next in the African American tradition of “Each one, teach one.”
Alvin Ailey Tickets
Ailey Studios
405 West 55th St
(at Ninth Ave)
Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan
Subways
(1)(2) to 59th St – Columbus Circle
(A)(C)(B)(D) to 59th St – Columbus Circle