“The genesis of this work came to me while seeing Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall,” explains Robert Battle. “I found myself utterly absorbed in the intricacies of how the choir moved as a unit and then organized and condensed themselves in the pews. The juxtaposition of the choir themselves constrained by space while their voices traveled through the hall was fascinating. I began creating the movement you will see in Mass by deconstructing the chorus. I wanted an original score and was familiar with John Mackey from previous works I had created, making him a clear choice for the composer.”
The ballet was originally created for a “New Dances” program at The Juilliard School in November 2004. The New York Times’ review of the performance declared: “Mr. Battle, the youngest choreographer, has recently made a name for himself with original rapid-fire movement and unexpected imagery. The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, at the rear of the stage, provided the sound, growing in intensity. Mr. Battle took the senior class along the same path. The dancers scooted around, huddled and worked themselves up wonderfully into astounding vigor. The ritual ended with the leader throwing himself to the floor and a group flying out into the wings.”
Set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of the Oscar-nominated song “Wild is the Wind,” In/Side offers audiences an intimate look at a man’s most private struggles.
Artistic Director and choreographer Robert Battle noted that it was Alvin Ailey himself who said that the greatest works of art are the most personal. With this solo, he aimed to evoke a sense of openness that he says “reminds us that we’re not alone in our feelings of sadness and isolation and gives us a connection to someone else.”
Dancer Samuel Lee Roberts, on whom Battle created the work, described it as “one of the most exhilarating, exhausting, and frightening things I have ever done. I had never had to be so completely vulnerable in such a public space.” But that honesty and expressiveness are what draw both dancers and audiences to Battle’s works. “The thing I love most about performing his work is the way the drama drives the dance,” explained Roberts. “It’s never just steps and shapes.”
Originally created as a solo, this high-energy comical dance was reinvented as a duet by the Ailey company for its December 2016 opening night gala benefit, “An Evening of Ailey and Jazz” – in anticipation of the legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald’s centennial in April 2017.
Using a live concert recording of Fitzgerald performing the song “Airmail Special,” Ella matches the iconic singer’s virtuosic scatting with lightning-fast, articulated movement in an irresistible tour-de-force that leaves audiences (and the dancers) breathless.
Take four amazing Ailey dancers and add in Wynton Marsalis’ delicious jazz score – written in 4/4 time – and you’ll understand why Robert Battle cheekily titled this exuberant short work For Four. Originally created as the opening video segment for the 2021 Ailey Spring Gala virtual broadcast, Battle used the pent-up energy of a world that had largely been cooped up for the prior 15 months during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Dance really is about being close together,” said Mr. Battle. “When we were in the studio making this dance, you could feel the electricity of what we did together, the way we felt so free to express ourselves in the way that we do, and so For Four is a manifestation of that expression.”
In its review of the Gala, The New York Times observed: “With all its spinning and attitudinizing… [For Four] can seem like simple release. But there’s also a darker, more desperate undertone, a hint of having to perform…. Something more than pent-up energy is being expressed.”
Artistic Director Robert Battle’s sensuous, swirling duet evokes the tenderness and ecstasy in Gustave Charpentier’s aria. With its fluid grace, this gem exemplifies the choreographer’s skill for nuanced gesture and vivid imagery.
Robert Battle’s bravura work mixes humor and high-flying movement in a savvy deconstruction of Indian Kathak dance rhythms. Clear shapes and propulsive jumps mimic the vocalized syllables of Sheila Chandra’s syncopated score.
For Battle, the work represents his modest beginnings as a dance-maker and reminds him of how far he’s come. He created Takademe while still a dancer with the Parsons Dance Company, in a living room in Queens, New York. “Most dances have a lot to do with restrictions and problem-solving,” he explains. “And one of the problems was that we didn’t have a lot of space, so the dance stays very stationary. But then when we finally got studio space…the movement travels on a long diagonal. Freedom. I’m always reminded of that as a metaphor for where I am now with Ailey, where there is a remarkable amount of space.”
It’s unlikely that the young choreographer in that Queens apartment could have imagined the distinguished company he’d find himself in when critics embraced his work.
2004’s Love Stories was a collaboration among Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison, choreographer Rennie Harris, and Artistic Director Robert Battle. Inspired by the African concept of “Sankofa”, which teaches that “we don’t know where we’re going unless we know where we have been”, this extraordinary ballet celebrates the traditions of African American dance and the rich heritage of Alvin Ailey.
In the ballet’s joyful finale, being presented as a standalone piece this season, Battle portrays a luminous future built on the lessons and legacy of the past. The New York Times called it “astoundingly well danced… a breakthrough in creative choreography” and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution proclaimed, “It’s a party!”
Using African American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations fervently explores the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.
More than just a popular dance work, it has become a cultural treasure, beloved by generations of fans. Seeing Revelations for the first time or the hundredth can be a transcendent experience, with audiences cheering, singing along and dancing in their seats from the opening notes of the plaintive “I Been ’Buked” to the rousing “Wade in the Water” and the triumphant finale, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.”
Ailey said that one of America’s richest treasures was the African American cultural heritage—“sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.” This enduring classic is a tribute to that tradition, born out of the choreographer’s “blood memories” of his childhood in rural Texas and the Baptist Church. But since its premiere in 1960, the ballet has been performed continuously around the globe, transcending barriers of faith and nationality, and appealing to universal emotions, making it the most widely-seen modern dance work in the world.
By turns muscular and lyrical, The River is a sweeping full-company work that suggests tumbling rapids and meandering streams on a journey to the sea. Ailey’s allegory of birth, life and rebirth abounds with water references, from the spinning “Vortex” solo to the romantic “Lake” duet, and from the powerful “Falls” quartet to the joyful “Giggling Rapids.” The choreography demonstrates Ailey’s admiration for classical ballet, but retains the modern and jazz influences found in all his work. “The River shows Mr. Ailey at his inventive best,” declared The New York Times.
The grandeur of the dancing is matched by the music, which was Duke Ellington’s first symphonic score written for dance. Ailey and Ellington collaborated closely on the piece.
Former Associate Artistic Director Masazumi Chaya, the foremost living expert on Ailey’s repertory, believes that the ballet feels fresh each time around because “each audience member can make a story of their own from The River.” Alvin was very clever; he created something that can be applied to one’s entire life — birth, a relationship with a child, or even one’s impression of a flower. It is what the audience makes of it. It is what it means to the individual.”
This new production features costumes newly designed for the first time since the 1970s.
Blues Suite is the ballet that launched the sensational Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958. What is extraordinary is that Alvin Ailey was just 27 years old when the dance premiered and it was only the sixth ballet that he had choreographed. Blues Suite is often documented as Mr. Ailey’s first masterpiece, where he had found his own miraculous voice as a creative artist presenting real people on the concert dance stage, defining his choreographic genius.
As Jennifer Dunning wrote in her book Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance, “[Blues Suite] is set in a ‘sporting house.’ The characters are the men and women who frequent the place, drinking, dancing, and flirting to the music of the blues over the course of a night that ends with the early morning sounds of a train and church bells.”
The New York Times adds: “Created two years before the first version of Revelations, it has often been described as that spiritual work’s secular counterpart, a representation of the Saturday night sinning that precedes the Sunday churchgoing… hailed for its social observation, for putting ‘real people’ onstage, characters from the milieu of Ailey’s Southern childhood, then underrepresented.”
Alvin Ailey originally created this strong yet serene solo in 1962. The ballet is a stunning, masterful expression of Duke Ellington’s music, performed by the formidable Ailey dancers.
Pas de Duke is Alvin Ailey’s spirited modern dance translation of a classical pas de deux, originally created in 1976 as a showcase for Judith Jamison and Mikhail Baryshnikov. She was a reigning star of modern dance; he was one of the world’s most famous ballet dancers, having defected from the Soviet Union two years earlier. Ailey made brilliant use of the dancers’ physical and stylistic differences, crafting an elegant, flirtatious work that showed off their exuberance and virtuosity as they engaged in a playful game of one-upmanship.
The work is comprised of five solos and duets that require extraordinary technical facility, flawless timing, and strong acting skills. Since its premiere, it has been performed by generations of dancers who have each put their own unique twist on the choreography, and it has stood the test of time in part for how perfectly it captures the timeless sophistication of Duke Ellington’s jazz music. The New York Times has praised it as “one of those special dances that lives in new ways with each new set of performers.”
Using African American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations fervently explores the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.
More than just a popular dance work, it has become a cultural treasure, beloved by generations of fans. Seeing Revelations for the first time or the hundredth can be a transcendent experience, with audiences cheering, singing along and dancing in their seats from the opening notes of the plaintive “I Been ’Buked” to the rousing “Wade in the Water” and the triumphant finale, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.”
Ailey said that one of America’s richest treasures was the African American cultural heritage—“sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.” This enduring classic is a tribute to that tradition, born out of the choreographer’s “blood memories” of his childhood in rural Texas and the Baptist Church. But since its premiere in 1960, the ballet has been performed continuously around the globe, transcending barriers of faith and nationality, and appealing to universal emotions, making it the most widely-seen modern dance work in the world.
In the Company’s first two-act ballet, acclaimed hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris completes a trilogy of works—including past Ailey audience favorites Exodus and Home—with this hour-long work inspired by the life and times of Mr. Ailey.
With Lazarus, Harris connects past and present in a powerful work that addresses the racial inequities America faced when Mr. Ailey founded this company in 1958 and still faces today.
Using African American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations fervently explores the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.
More than just a popular dance work, it has become a cultural treasure, beloved by generations of fans. Seeing Revelations for the first time or the hundredth can be a transcendent experience, with audiences cheering, singing along and dancing in their seats from the opening notes of the plaintive “I Been ’Buked” to the rousing “Wade in the Water” and the triumphant finale, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.”
Ailey said that one of America’s richest treasures was the African American cultural heritage—“sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.” This enduring classic is a tribute to that tradition, born out of the choreographer’s “blood memories” of his childhood in rural Texas and the Baptist Church. But since its premiere in 1960, the ballet has been performed continuously around the globe, transcending barriers of faith and nationality, and appealing to universal emotions, making it the most widely-seen modern dance work in the world.
