Meet Alvin Ailey’s new artistic director — Alicia Graf Mack

Alicia Graf Mack, the new artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and only the fourth permanent artistic director in the company’s 67-year history, was only 17 when she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem under the direction of Arthur Mitchell. At the time, especially in ballet, the typical professional dancer’s career began right out of high school, and college was a place to go when it was over.

Graf Mack’s path quickly diverged from that standard course when an injury and autoimmune disease derailed her plans, and she was forced to retire from the stage temporarily — for the first time — just a few years later. “My career path has been far from linear,” she told ArtsATL. “But it was one that allowed me to grow my dance career with several different companies learning all kinds of dance while also developing my knowledge and experience in arts administration and education and seeing firsthand how it’s possible to train professional dancers on the highest level through a higher education program.”

For almost two decades, she charted her own course into and out of several professional dance companies, including another two seasons with Dance Theatre of Harlem, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, guest performances with Alonso King LINES Ballet and two separate stints with Ailey — through an undergraduate degree at Columbia, a graduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, academic teaching and administration at Webster University and later receiving an honorary doctorate from The Juilliard School. At Juilliard, Graf Mack served as dean and director of the dance division from 2018 to 2025, the first Black woman and the youngest person ever to hold that position.

Graf Mack joined Ailey for the first time in 2005 after completing her degree at Columbia, during which time the first cohort of graduates from the Ailey/Fordham BFA in dance program took their places alongside her at the barre and on the stage. After another flare up of her autoimmune disease sidelined her again, she returned to graduate school, pursuing a master’s in arts administration at Washington University, and landed an assistant professorship at Webster.

In St. Louis, she said, she “fell in love with these institutions of higher learning where dancers are right on the cusp of their career” and discovered how the profession had shifted since she first started out. Graf Mack explained, “I realized that college programs were actually producing dancers who went on to join internationally acclaimed modern dance and ballet companies. I also realized that I loved working with pre-professional dancers and preparing them for the field, guiding them into their careers.” That love eventually led her to Julliard and now back, once again, to Ailey.

Graf Mack’s role as artistic director encompasses leadership of the first and second companies (Ailey and Ailey II), as well as shared visioning for the community education programs and the school, including the BFA program. Some dancers still join the company right out of high school, but many are taking different paths — through the Ailey/Fordham BFA or another undergraduate degree; from commercial and competition dance; or after a few years as independent concert dance artists. At one point or another over the course of her career, Graf Mack explored each of these routes into professional company life. She said her new job with Ailey “feels like the perfect fit” for her passions and experience.

Since Graf Mack took over after the company’s annual Atlanta visit last year, its 2026 run at the Fox Theatre, February 11 through February 16, will offer the city’s first glimpse of how her leadership will shape the company’s repertory and its future. Graf Mack has plenty of experience putting a performance bill together and fostering choreographic voices by commissioning new work; she did both at Webster University and Julliard. 

At Ailey, however, the context for and international visibility of her choices alter the stakes somewhat. As Laura Regensdorf described it in the 2022 “‘We Got Very Creative’: Alicia Graf Mack on Leading Juilliard’s Dancers Into a New Era” feature in Vanity Fair: “Unlike an institution geared toward preservation, a place like Juilliard is necessarily kinetic, given the influx of students bringing an almost intravenous-level jolt of what’s around the corner.” In contrast, preservation — of the history, cultural memory and creative contributions of the African diaspora — is central to Ailey’s art and the company he founded.

“It is so important to hold on to the legacy of Alvin Ailey when curating,” said Graf Mack. Although she never met Ailey, she said, “I know him in the way you get to know someone when you work intimately with their creations. I also worked under Judith Jamison and Robert Battle, and, in terms of the succession, I feel like I embody their vision for the company along with my own.”

“I always want to find choreographers who will innovate, who think in new ways, who have fresh voices,” she continued, “but also that fit the Ailey aesthetic and understand everything the Ailey dancers can do.”

The suite of dances Graf Mack and Associate Artistic Director Matthew Rushing selected for the Atlanta run highlight Graf Mack’s connection to Ailey, both the artist and the company, while also engaging with one another structurally and thematically and showcasing the full scope of the dancers’ technical prowess and performative artistry.

Revelations will, of course, close every program. Two of the other pieces in this repertory are similarly big dances with multiple sections and pair the Ailey/Horton movement vocabulary with instantly-recognizable music drawn from beyond the concert hall. The score for Grace by Ronald K. Brown ranges from jazz classics like Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” to Kela Futi’s Afropop. Graf Mack performed Grace while she was in the company, and she described it as an Atlanta favorite that has quickly become another signature work since the company revived it last year. 

Embrace, by Frederick Earl Mosley, who started as a student at the school in the 1980s and went on to join the company and later the faculty, premiered in December at New York City Center. “When we premiered it, I looked at my artistic team, and I told them to listen, just listen, for the audience’s reaction when a new song started,” said Graf Mack. “It was beautiful. You could literally hear the audience respond because they automatically knew these love songs by Stevie Wonder, by Etta James, by Maxwell, Pink, Des’ree and Ed Sheeran.”  

Judith Jamison created the duet A Case of You for beloved Ailey board chair Joan Weill and later integrated it into a longer work, Reminiscent. “My first rehearsals at Ailey were with Ms. Jamison learning A Case of You,” Graf Mack recalled. “I thought it was fitting in my first season to bring it back. It’s quite beautiful and touching.”

Like A Case of You, Song of the Anchorite, another new work by Jamar Roberts, foregrounds the company’s legacy and also holds personal significance for Graf Mack. Roberts was Graf Mack’s primary partner while they were both dancing with the company, and he has subsequently become a prolific choreographer for Ailey and other companies around the world. Song of the Anchorite is an homage to Ailey’s Hermit Songs, a solo Ailey created for himself in 1960. “You see all these references to the original Hermit Songs, but it is a new interpretation of the idea that Jamar believed Mr. Ailey had as he was creating that work,” Graf Mack said.

Blink of An Eye, by Medhi Walerski, is just 12 minutes long, but Graf Mack said it’s filled to bursting with innovative artistry. “It’s extremely contemporary, with a lot of fine technical ballet and modern dance language,” she said. “It’s also extremely musical, showing both the dancers’ virtuosity and their vulnerability. Mehdi allows the dancers grace to interpret the work as they’re moving so the work can continue to evolve as the dancers evolve in their exploration of it.”

For her part, Graf Mack said she is just as excited to be back in Atlanta as the city’s dance patrons are to have her here. “I remember performing at the Fox,” she mused. “The theater itself is just gorgeous, and the feeling that you have as a dancer on that stage with the Atlanta audience is unmatched. They go on the ride with the dancers. I always loved hearing people call out their responses. That exchange of ideas, of energy, of spirit, is so germane to our company. It’s so foundationally important to the vision and the mission and the aesthetic that Mr. Ailey set forth so many years ago.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will return to the Fox Theatre February 11 through February 15. Find out more information and get tickets on the Alvin Ailey website.

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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.