As Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrates its 65th anniversary year, the organization has embarked on an initiative to honor the legacy of its founder, Alvin Ailey, by providing free educational resources through PBS. This past February, the first installment of a new eight-part documentary series on Ailey’s life and work, titled Portrait of Ailey, […]
Ballerina and teacher Delores Browne Abelson, known professionally as Delores Browne, transitioned on October 2, 2023. Her close friend, Marilyn Napoli, confirmed that Browne had battled kidney cancer for several months. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Browne started her love affair with ballet in middle school. In 1949, she was awarded a scholarship by Marion Cuyjet, […]
For the up-and-coming generation, dance history doesn’t always sound like the most exciting course. But for students at The Ailey School, former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancer Renee Robinson is bringing enthusiasm to the class by helping her students make personal connections to the past. Robinson’s training began with classical ballet at 9 years […]
International master teacher Ana Marie Forsythe has devoted nearly 50 years of her life documenting the Lester Horton technique in an effort to preserve it. “Dance has given me gifts that I never realized were possible when I took my first plié,” she says. “I enjoy sharing my breadth of knowledge of the Lester Horton […]
Odds are, your dance students’ Instagram feeds are filled with images of professionals showing off their 180-degree penchés or demonstrating their highest extensions. It’s enough for a student to come to equate the length of their lines with the quality of their dancing—after all, dancers so often hear “long lines” as something to strive for. […]
Though Asadata Dafora isn’t widely known today, he blazed a trail for countless African-based dance companies who enjoy a firm foothold on the concert dance stage today. He reworked the spatial orientation of various cultural dances to fit a proscenium stage and made them more presentational to appeal to Western audiences. Dafora influenced many dance […]
“When our hearts break, WE Dance.” That’s the caption for the video above, created by and featuring dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Made in the midst of widespread protests over the death of George Floyd and so many other innocent Black people, it features poetic text written and performed by company member Hope […]
How many of us have hovered breathlessly over our iPads, watching grainy YouTube footage of Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov in Theme and Variations? Or Suzanne Farrell in Mozartiana? (Hundreds of thousands of us, to be exact.) Well, get ready: Yesterday, Lincoln Center announced its brand new Dance Week, a series of seven online broadcasts […]
Create a Watch Party! Here are four free offerings from New York City’s most celebrated arts organizations to share with your students and their families. New York City Ballet Excerpt of Christopher Wheeldon’s This Bitter Earth performed by Sara Mearns and Adrian Danchig-Waring. “Words cannot fully capture the beauty or essence of this moving pas […]
From 1961 to 1994, legendary photographer Jack Mitchell captured thousands of moments with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Now, this treasure trove of dance history is available to the public for viewing via the online archives of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The collection includes both color and black-and-white images […]