Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, one of the world’s most popular dance companies, will return to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on Mother’s Day Weekend, Friday-Sunday, May 9-11 as the final stop on its coast-to-coast 2025 United States tour in a season celebrating the life and legacy of Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison (1943-2024).
On this episode of The Art of the Story, WBGO's Doug Doyle chats with Ailey's Artistic Director Matthew Rushing and Ailey's musical director/composer DuBois A'Keen.
Led by Matthew Rushing, the passionate spirit and extraordinary technique of Ailey’s dancers will be showcased in three exciting performances featuring world premieres, new productions, repertory favorites, and Ailey classics.
This year’s exciting world premieres include: Sacred Songs by Matthew Rushing, former AILEY dancers Jamar Roberts’s Al-Andalus Blues and Hope Boykin’s Finding Free, and Many Angels—the first premiere for the Company by Lar Lubovitch. Sacred Songs features music used in the original 1960 premiere of Alvin Ailey’s seminal Revelations but later omitted, resurrecting and reimaging those spirituals—with the collaboration of creative associate and musical director Du’Bois A’Keen—as an offering to our present need for lamentation, faith, and joy.
