ALVIN AILEY DANCE
Opens Season With Dizzy and Ella
New York City Center
131 W 55th St (btwn 6th & 7th)
New York, NY 10019
Mainstage
Nov 30 - Dec 31, 2016
www.alvinailey.org / http://www.nycitycenter.org
If your brand of holiday dance is “The Nutcracker,” your options are
plentiful. But there’s always an alternative: Alvin Ailey American Dance
Theater opened its City Center engagement on Wednesday, Nov. 30, with
“An Evening of Ailey and Jazz.” Excerpts from works like “The Winter in
Lisbon,” Billy Wilson’s tribute to Dizzy Gillespie, will share the
program with “Ella,” a one-off homage to Ella Fitzgerald by the
company’s artistic director, Robert Battle.
But beyond jazz, the season has another, perhaps more timely focus: social issues. Along with a new production of Ailey’s 1969 “Masekela Langage,” a look at apartheid and the violence of Chicago in the 1960s set to a score by the South African jazz composer Hugh Masekela, there are two premieres. Hope Boykin finds inspiration in sermons and speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “r-Evolution, Dream.,” an ensemble work with music by Ali Jackson and narration recorded by the Tony Award-winning actor Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”). And Kyle Abraham completes his three-part “Untitled America,” in which he explores the effect of the prison system on African-American families. This is not tutus and sugarplums.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater inspires all in a universal celebration of the human spirit using the African-American cultural experience and the American modern dance tradition. Nearly 60 years after its founding, Ailey continues to move forward under the leadership of Robert Battle, revealing once again why Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the world’s most beloved dance companies.
Opens Season With Dizzy and Ella
New York City Center
131 W 55th St (btwn 6th & 7th)
New York, NY 10019
Mainstage
Nov 30 - Dec 31, 2016
www.alvinailey.org / http://www.nycitycenter.org
But beyond jazz, the season has another, perhaps more timely focus: social issues. Along with a new production of Ailey’s 1969 “Masekela Langage,” a look at apartheid and the violence of Chicago in the 1960s set to a score by the South African jazz composer Hugh Masekela, there are two premieres. Hope Boykin finds inspiration in sermons and speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “r-Evolution, Dream.,” an ensemble work with music by Ali Jackson and narration recorded by the Tony Award-winning actor Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”). And Kyle Abraham completes his three-part “Untitled America,” in which he explores the effect of the prison system on African-American families. This is not tutus and sugarplums.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater inspires all in a universal celebration of the human spirit using the African-American cultural experience and the American modern dance tradition. Nearly 60 years after its founding, Ailey continues to move forward under the leadership of Robert Battle, revealing once again why Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the world’s most beloved dance companies.
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