Wanna dance Alvin Ailey’s ‘Revelations’? Maybe you can.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has a special relationship with Atlanta. And their all-ages workshops leading up to performances at the Fox Theatre let them show it.

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Every year, when Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater comes to Atlanta, in addition to shows at the Fox Theatre, the Ailey organization offers workshops, lecture series, classes and smaller, more intimate performances at churches, schools and community centers. All this is the work of the Alvin Ailey Arts in Education and Community Programs (AAIE) and the Ailey Extension. According to Lisa Johnson-Willingham, director of the Ailey Extension, these offerings are the primary way many Atlantans connect with the company and its founder’s legacy. 

“In the workshops, for example, we have loyal fans of the company who want to deepen their experience of Mr. Ailey’s work and others who may have never seen the company perform before,” she said.

From February 12 through February 16, the company will present six world premieres and is certain to fill the theater with loyal fans who each year show up and show out for the company’s return to what former Artistic Director Robert Battle called its “second home.” But Ailey dancers and educators have been in the city for almost two weeks already, fulfilling Ailey’s lifelong mission to bring dance, which he believed comes from the people, back to the people.

For the last 10 years, Johnson-Willingham has partnered with Jai McClendon Jones and AREA (Atlanta’s Resource for Entertainment & Arts) to bring the Ailey Experience to Atlanta-area students. This year, it will take place on February 8 and February 9. Classes and workshops will be centered around teaching young dancers of all ages the Ailey-Horton technique and movement from Revelations. As Johnson-Willingham explained, participants get more than dance technique classes; they also learn about the company’s and its founder’s history, his art and how all are linked with the Civil Rights Movement.

Even during the pandemic, when the company missed its annual Atlanta visit in 2021, the offstage programming continued. “We held virtual discussions and classes that kept everyone connected,” Johnson-Willingham said.

Beyond the dance studio, students at Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy and M. Agnes Jones Elementary School participated this month in Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Nasha Thomas, national director of AileyCamp and a master teacher for AAIE, piloted the curriculum at Atlanta’s Inman Middle School in 2000. These workshops engage students through reading Ailey’s biography, watching video of company performances, learning choreography from Revelations, making up their own choreography and exploring the pivotal 1960s and ’70s in research and conversations with their own families. 

“Dance is the vehicle, but it’s really about leadership,” Thomas said. “Mr. Ailey led by giving the best and asking the best. The interdisciplinary approach gives these kids a platform to have a voice and make connections across disciplines. They love it.” Ailey launched the AileyCamp summer program, another AAIE initiative, in 1989, shortly before his death.

The company has forged partnerships with many local organizations over the years, illustrating how AAIE creates programming with, as opposed to simply for, the communities it serves.

Other events this year include DANCE FASH: A Conversation on Costume Design, Movement and Dance, presented by SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, a lecture-demonstration focused on designer Jon Taylor’s collaborations with various Ailey choreographers; a Revelations master class hosted by Georgia Gwinnett College and open to participants of all levels; Ailey-inspired performances in partnership with AREA on February 2 at Cascade United Methodist Church and during the 10 a.m. service at Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 9; and the AileyDance for Active Aging workshop that I attended, for which Ailey partnered with the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF).

While the youth-focused programs are perhaps the most visible footprints of AAIE’s presence in the community, Johnson-Willingham emphasized that its overarching goal is to remove the barriers of age and experience, bringing people together. “Sometimes we will have three generations of a family participating in the same workshop,” Johnson-Willingham said. “It’s a beautiful thing to see everyone moving in the room together, where they can be vulnerable in a space without judgment.”

The Active Aging workshop took place at the Helene S. Mills Senior Multipurpose Facility in Old Fourth Ward, a short walk from the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park and down the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church. The event was free and open to anyone 50 years and older. Two charter buses conveyed attendees from other senior and community centers.

After a warm-up led by two instructors, one demonstrating movement from a chair for seated participants, Thomas summarized Ailey’s life and work and led an improvisation session inspired by the prompt “resilience.” She asked us to brainstorm associated words — courage, resolute, brave, determination — and helped a group of volunteers craft a movement phrase that embodied some of those ideas.

One attendee, Jacquelyn, offered a gesture for “resolute”: stepping confidently with the right foot forward, leaning in with the right shoulder, making a fist with the right hand and extending the right arm slowly from waist to thigh. She had always wanted to study dance, but her family couldn’t afford lessons when she was a girl. Her daughter, however, had studied at the Ailey school and danced with the company.

Thomas, a 39-year veteran of the Ailey organization, concluded by teaching us choreography from Revelations to combine with the new movement. She recalled bits of advice from Ailey and Judith Jamison, his handpicked successor whom the dance world is still mourning after her death in November, and drew a collective laugh with: “Ms. Jamison always said that in this part, it’s like you’re an old woman with a big bosom.”

I experienced a profound sense of place — in both time and geography — while listening to Ailey’s story and learning movement from his signature work just blocks from where King was born. I have seen Revelations many, many times. When I see it again this weekend, I will do so with a newfound awareness of how the phrases Thomas passed on to us feel in my own body and how the work explores, as Johnson-Willingham says, “places of the deepest grief and the holiest redemption.” 

Thomas said the Ailey company has remained relevant for more than 60 years by being truly accessible. “Mr. Ailey said that anyone can move. What we do and what we have to share is for everyone. This is about showing people that they too can be part of this world.” 

Alicia Graf Mack, currently dean and director of the dance division at Julliard and a former Ailey dancer herself, will take the helm as artistic director in July. Whatever changes the transition brings, Atlanta, which has hosted the company every year since 1986 (except for 2021) is likely to retain its status as a special place, a second home, because it is so deeply tied to the “blood memories” that inspired Ailey’s art.

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Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.