Everything She Wants

Dance is expression. Dance is spiritual. Dance is activism. Dance is life. I feel most alive when I am listening to music and dancing.  As a spectator and fan, some of my fondest moments of watching dance performances have been witnessing the dignity and grace of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Every time I see the Ailey company, I am inspired, moved, and grounded in the beauty and complexity of the African American experience.  Photo by Paul Kolnik For me, the highlight is always "Revelations," Mr. Ailey's three-part ode to his upbringing in the Black Baptist church. The three sections -- "Pilgrim of Sorrow"; "Take Me to the Water"; and "Move, Members, Move" -- tell the story of African American faith and persistence from slavery to freedom. Over the weekend,  I had the pleasure of taking an outdoor Community Workshop in downtown Brooklyn, where we learned some of the choreography for "Revelations." I beamed from ear to ear...

Watching the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater makes me proud to be a Black woman. This ballet company is graced by dancers of color who can tackle any technique or dance style. But whether the choreography is rooted in jazz, lyrical, contemporary, hip hop or ballet, they do it the Ailey way, which means they move with so much culturally rooted soulfulness and swag that I find myself marveling at their languid form and fierce footwork. In my lifetime, I've seen the Ailey company perform at least a dozen times and each time I picked a performance that included Mr. Ailey's beloved "Revelations." I will never grow tired of witnessing this jubilant homage to the Black Southern Baptist church. By the end I'm always standing, singing and clapping along with the rest of the audience's Amen chorus. Yes, rock a my soul in the bosom of Abraham ! Like most theatrical events and performing arts programs, this is Ailey's comeback season after going dark in 2020 due to...

(Tracy E. Hopkins) W ritten by Aleshea Harris and directed by Whitney White, the interactive play  What to Send Up When It Goes Down pulls from  the gravity of the racially polarized times we're living in.  If Public Enemy's woke  anthem, "Fight the Power," were a theatrical work, this would be it.   Cast member Denise Manning./Photo by Donna Ward   Presented by BAM and Playwrights Horizons in association with The Movement Theatre Company through July 11 th at BAM Fisher (321 Ashland Place, $25) , I attended a performance of  What to Send Up When It Goes Down  and a week later I'm still reeling. The evening began with a pre-show lobby experience, an installation of photographs of men, women and children who mercilessly and senselessly lost their lives to anti-Black violence, including Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray.  From the outside of the BAM building some of the portraits of Black...