Alvin Ailey’s Philadelphia show is a homecoming for Jeroboam Bozeman

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is based in New York. But when the company performs in Philadelphia, as it does most years, it’s something of a homecoming.

There are always a number of dancers with Philadanco on their resumes.

When Ailey performs at the Academy of Music this week, one of those dancers visiting his old stomping grounds is Jeroboam Bozeman.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Bozeman will be performing the roles of Jesus and a sinner man in Revelations, by far the company’s most popular work, which Ailey created in 1960.

It doesn’t get boring, Bozeman said, even though it’s on nearly every program.

“In Revelations, there’s so much to bite into, I feel as a dancer, because there’s so many different things happening,” Bozeman said. “It may be one dancer’s 360th time performing this one role, and then another night and it could be their first time performing a different role in that same dance.”

He will also be Nelson Mandela in a revival of Survivors, a piece Ailey choreographed in 1986 about Nelson and Winnie Mandela, and which hasn’t been performed in many years.

Bozeman joined the Broadway tour of Elton John’s Aida, touring China for a year right out of high school. When he returned to the States, he moved to Philly and joined Philadanco, at 19.

He was a regular on Philadelphia stages for three years.

“It was an incredible experience. I learned so much being with Joan Myers Brown,” Bozeman said. “She has a patience that is unmatched... I know when I came, I was a bit of a riot. But I felt as though I had an opportunity to really grow as an artist and as a man there.”

Still, Bozeman had his eye on Ailey since his first dance classes in his Brooklyn junior high.

“It may sound cliché or it may sound serendipitous, but there were Alvin Ailey posters on the doors always,” he said.

But even before that, when he was in elementary school, his assistant principal took him and another eager student to see the company. At the end of the performance, he says is sure he saw Alvin Ailey himself washing his hands in the bathroom, although Ailey was no longer alive.

“I think at that age, we are a lot more open and receptive to and — I will say this daringly — connected to a spiritual realm,” Bozeman said. “And I believe that, me having that experience. It just opened so many doors, and it kinda was almost like destiny in a way.”

After Philadanco, he moved to Seattle and danced with Donald Byrd, and then with Spectrum Dance Theater.

When he moved back to New York, he accepted a position with Ailey 2, which some may see as step or two down for a dancer with his experience.

Bozeman didn’t see it that way.

“I auditioned five times before actually getting into the company,” he said, adding that he’d never been part of the Ailey organization or participated in its certificate program or summer workshops. . “I was kind of like a stranger to the elite organization. So for me, it was an introduction for the Ailey organization to see me as an artist. In my head, it was always the bigger picture.”

Bozeman has been dancing with Ailey for 10 years. It’s an unranked company, but dancers who have been with the organization as long as he has “tend to get roles that have a lot more responsibility.”

He also works as a model and has appeared in Vanity Fair, in Neiman Marcus campaigns, and in fashion shows with the Pyer Moss label. He was widely seen as the “Bud Knight Celly of the Week” in a Bud Light commercial that aired during the 2019 Super Bowl.

It all goes back to Philadanco, Bozeman said. “JB [Myers Brown] has this model: If you dance at Danco, you could dance anywhere. And it’s true. I truly believe that, because of it’s a smaller company, but it’s working. It’s moving. There’s so many different components. And it prepares you.”

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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. 7:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 24; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26. Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St. $20-$74. 215-893-1999 or kimmelculturalcampus.org.