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 […]
Here’s some Monday news to rock your soul: An upcoming Fox Searchlight film about the life of Alvin Ailey just got even more enticing—Barry Jenkins, the filmmaker who won an Oscar for Moonlight, has signed on as director. It feels like quite a fitting hire. Back in 2017, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic director […]
Ana Marie Forsythe’s eyes twinkle, and a smile plays at the corners of her mouth as she welcomes the 40-plus teachers who are enrolled for her two-week-long Horton teacher-training workshop at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater studios in New York City—plus me, a dancer and writer, taking part for the day. As we watch […]
Before joining Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Sarah Daley learned how to find inspiration in everyday life from her mentor Watmora Casey. “I remember when I was getting ready to compete in Youth America Grand Prix in 2002, I was doing the Black Swan Variation. I wasn’t giving enough fire to portray the character, so […]