Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is coming back to Philly, with a new artistic director and a new Neenan ballet
Alicia Graf Mack was a star in her dancing days. Then she was dean and director of the dance division at Juilliard. Now, she's back leading the company where she spent much of her successful career.
One of the country’s most popular dance companies, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, is coming back to Philly this weekend, early in the company’s 20-city U.S. tour.
It is bringing an eternal favorite, Revelations, as well as new pieces.
The biggest change in the company, however, is its artistic director, just the fourth in the company’s 68 years. The first was Ailey himself. Then, for many years, it was run by a Philadelphian, Judith Jamison. More recently, Robert Battle led the company for 12 years.
As of last summer, Ailey is led by Alicia Graf Mack, 47, who was a big star at Dance Theatre of Harlem and then the company she is now directing.
“I am very grateful to be back,” she said. “This year has been a very beautiful homecoming to a company that I love very deeply, and this organization has been part of my North Star since I was a child. [It’s been] part of my thought process about what I want to be when I grow up, and how I want to be, and how I want to express myself.”
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Just before this, she was dean and director of the dance division of Juilliard School, where she worked closely with students and commissioned work for them to perform — including pieces by Philadelphia choreographers Rennie Harris and Matthew Neenan.
The tour coming to Philly this weekend also has a new Neenan piece, Difference Between.
“Matthew is someone that I’ve really admired for many years, and I know Matthew Rushing (Ailey’s associate artistic director) shares that same sentiment,” Graf Mack said. While working with Neenan at Juilliard, “I knew what a genius he is.”
Neenan’s new piece, set to music by Heather Christian, a recent MacArthur fellow, “is just so heartbreakingly beautiful,” Graf Mack said.
Ailey is also bringing Jazz Island, a new work choreographed by Maija Garcia.
“It is a beautiful homage to Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade,” both of whom made works for Philadanco. “Carmen basically cofounded this company with her best friend, Alvin Ailey,” Graf Mack said.
Graf Mack was born in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in Columbia, Md., about 120 miles south of Philly. Her mother was a professor at Howard University and also a model.
“At home she would exercise and move to music to stay in shape,” Graf Mack said. “I would follow her, and she was kind of like, ‘Wow, she really picks up moves very easily.’”
So at 2 1/2, Graf Mack started dance classes, “and I found my home there.”
Eventually she and her sister, Daisha (who would become a commercial dancer performing with Rihanna, TLC, and Beyoncé), became serious ballet students.
In the summers, Graf Mack would study at New York’s School of American Ballet or the American Ballet Theatre.
“One summer, I participated in international ballet competitions. I went to St. Petersburg, Russia, competed in the Vaganova Prix, and placed in the finals,” she said. “I think I was the only American and certainly the only Black person there.”
Despite an impressive career, Graf Mack met with some roadblocks. Three years after she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem, she developed ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease affecting her joints.
So she looked at new careers. She applied and got into Columbia University.
She studied history and for three years, interned at JPMorgan, with all intentions of working for a bank. That firm was involved in arts institutions, and Graf Mack said she found her niche.
“That kind of sparked my love for arts administration. But actually after I graduated, I was moving a little bit more, and I thought I should try to dance [again].
“It was Carmen de Lavallade who told me, ‘Alicia, you can work at a bank any time in your life, but your time to dance is now.’ So I went back to Dance Theatre of Harlem for a year, and that’s when the company closed. It left 40-some Black ballet dancers without work.”
For a year, she found freelance work with top companies such as Complexions, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, as well as celebrity gigs with the likes of Beyoncé, John Legend, Andre 3000, Alicia Keys, and Jon Batiste.
In 2005, she joined Alvin Ailey. Three years into her tenure, her illness flared up again.
So she went back to school to earn a masters in nonprofit management from Washington University in St. Louis.
But then Jamison, her former boss and lifelong idol, was retiring from Ailey and asked Graf Mack to dance at her final performance. Battle watched from the wings and wanted her back in the company. She returned for three more years.
In 2014, a back injury finally ended her performance career and started her arts administration career.
“I feel like I have a very lived history of the legacy of the company,” Graf Mack said. “I’m very grateful to now keep the legacy moving forward.”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Feb. 27-March 1, Academy of Music. $36-$147. 215-893-1999 or ensembleartsphilly.org