The New Jersey Performing Arts Center will present its annual Mother’s Day engagement of America’s premier modern dance company, Alvin Ailey with showings Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday. The Alvin Ailey organization is one of the world’s leading modern dance companies and a global ambassador of American culture.
NJPAC is also enhancing the experience by offering added on specials – on Friday, it’s Shopping in the lobby, Saturday-Pre-Performance Pampering & Spa Treatments and Sunday Brunch at Nico Kitchen + Bar. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has grown from a now-fabled performance in March 1958 at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. Led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African-American modern dancers, that performance changed forever the perception of American dance.
To date, the company has performed for an estimated 23 million people in 48 states and 71 countries on 6 continents – and to millions more through television broadcasts.
Artistic Director, Robert Battle, recently visited the White House and accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honor – on behalf of Alvin Ailey. Bestowed 25 years after the passing of the Company’s legendary founder, President Obama proclaimed that “through him, African-American history was told in a way that it had never been told before — with passionate, virtuoso dance performances that transfixed audiences worldwide.”
The Associated Press proclaimed that “…the timing could hardly be more apt for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s new civil rights-themed piece” ODETTA a world premiere choreographed by renowned Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing. The tribute is set to the musical repertoire of celebrated singer and civil rights activist Odetta Holmes, who was known as “the voice of the Civil Rights Movement” and anointed as “the queen of American folk music” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Elegant, electrifying, and marvelously athletic, this always dazzling company arrives with programs that include some of their newest works as well as company classics like Ailey’s masterwork, Revelations, set to African-American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues.
