The Power of a Dance Company

In Conversation with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Artistic Director Alicia Graf Mack

February 2026, FT Chinese Columnist Fanyu Lin

“All great arts to me in my mind are social. They came from the people, and I am trying to give them back to the people.”
— Alvin Ailey (1931-1989)

In the early 1950s, Alvin Ailey was already moving within the circles of American avant-garde art. He maintained close creative exchanges with artists and social thinkers of his time, including the poet and activist Maya Angelou, then still at the beginning of her public life. It was a moment when Black culture, poetry, dance, and social reality were deeply intertwined, when the body and language became parallel forms of expression. It was within this charged context that Ailey shaped his artistic conviction: that the body could bear witness to history, that dance could carry collective experience, and that it could speak directly to the world as it was unfolding.

That belief took physical form in 1958, when Alvin Ailey and a group of young Black dancers stepped onto the stage at New York’s 92nd Street Y for their first performance as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Today, the company is led by its fourth Artistic Director, Alicia Graf Mack. We spoke during the heart of the Ailey season at New York City Center, a moment of both continuity and transition. When she speaks about stepping into the role, she calls it a homecoming.

Alicia Graf Mack rehearsing Judith Jamison's A Case of You with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Alice Castro

Coming Home

When Alvin Ailey founded his company, he did not do so to succeed within an existing system. He built it because the system itself needed to change. The dance world he entered did not have room for the stories he needed to tell, nor for the bodies that carried them.

He created the company to give Black dancers a home. From the beginning, Ailey imagined something larger than his own choreography: a home that would nurture dancers, commission new voices, educate young people, and carry its work across borders.

 Ailey trusted the universality of truth. Works such as Revelations were rooted deeply in Black life, yet audiences around the world recognised themselves in the movement. He did not dilute experience to widen appeal. He went deeper, and depth became the bridge.

Above all, he believed in people. He created a culture where dancers were seen, challenged, and trusted. That sense of belonging produced loyalty, excellence, and collective endurance.

After Ailey’s death in 1989, that culture did not fracture. It was carried forward first by Judith Jamison, and later by Robert Battle, each deepening the company’s artistic reach while remaining anchored to its founding values.

Alicia Graf Mack as a Company member (2005-14) in Alvin Ailey's Revelations. Photo by Andrew Eccles

This was the company Alicia walked into when she first joined in 2005, fresh from training, guided by instinct and discipline. Nearly two decades later, she returned as Artistic Director with a life fully lived behind her: a former principal dancer with Ailey and Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Dean and Director of the Dance Division at The Juilliard School.

“I feel prepared with all of the life experiences, work experiences, and education I’ve gained over these many years,” she said. “I feel ready to lead with real experience and also a deep love and passion for the company.”

Ailey is not simply a repertory company. It is an institution shaped by values articulated by its founder: excellence, humanity, community, and spirit. Alicia is clear about what must remain constant. “We know who we are,” she said. “And we know what we want to offer the world: work that uplifts people.”

The Body as Truth

Before she led from the front of the room, Alicia learned what it means to be told she did not fit. Early in her career, she was considered too tall to be a dancer, a judgment that many young artists recognize instantly. For some institutions, difference is something to correct. At Ailey, it became something to honour.

“Here, my height was seen as an asset, not a disqualification,” she recalled.

Alicia speaks about the body not as an object to discipline, but as an instrument to care for. Under her watch, the company prioritizes physical therapy, medical support, conditioning, and mental health resources. “We want to make sure that every artist is thriving,” she said. “You have to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit.”

This holistic approach is not sentimental. It is strategic. Dance, after all, is an art form built on repetition, endurance, and vulnerability. Excellence without care is unsustainable. She lived it as a dancer.

That understanding extends across the organization, from the main company to Ailey II, the school, and the education and community programs. Dancers and students arrive from around the world, carrying different bodies, abilities, and histories. “There is not one person who is similar to the other,” she said. “That’s what makes our organization so beautiful.”

The Joan Weill Center for Dance, with the Elaine Wynn & Family Education Wing, is home to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, The Ailey School, Ailey Extension, and Ailey Arts In Education & Community Programs. Photo by Frederick Charles

Nowhere is this ethos more visible than in Revelations, the company’s enduring signature work. Rooted in Ailey’s childhood memories of the Black church in rural Texas, the piece speaks of pain, faith, sorrow, and joy. Alicia is unequivocal. “It is a masterpiece that does not need to be touched or changed,” she said.

What evolves instead is the generation of dancers who carry it. “Each generation of Ailey dancer brings a new, fresh voice to the work,” she explained. The choreography remains intact, but the bodies change, and with them, the emotional resonance. That is how the work travels through time without losing its soul.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Alvin Ailey's Revelations. Photo by Paul Kolnik

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Alvin Ailey's Revelations. Photo by Tony Powell

Alvin Ailey and the Discipline of Devotion

To understand Alicia’s leadership, one must return again to Alvin Ailey. His work emerged from a belief that the body remembers what history tries to forget. That movement can hold what language abandons. Before choosing dance, Ailey wanted to paint, sculpt, write poetry, and create the great American novel. He wanted to make something large enough to contain a life. Dance became that vessel.

Ailey spoke of “blood memories”. These were not inherited stories. They were carried experiences. Spirituals sung without certainty of survival. Blues shaped by labor and loss. Gospel rooted in hope that had to be practiced daily. His choreography asks dancers to carry all of it at once.

Alvin Ailey in Alvin Ailey's Hermit Songs. Photo by Jack Mitchell. © Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Inc. and Smithsonian Institution

Alvin Ailey. Photo by John Lindquist. © Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University

The body, in Ailey’s work, is never abstract. It sweats. It trembles. It breaks and returns. The demand is absolute. Emotional truth must be matched by physical clarity. Anything less is a lie.

That demand has never softened.

For Alicia, leading Ailey means inheriting this devotion. The dancers are not driven by metrics. They are bound by belief. The organisation endures. It tours globally. It educates thousands. The Ailey School is not a pipeline, but a promise. Education, outreach, and performance are not separate functions. They are one breath.

This is why people cry. There is no performance of emotion here. There is exposure. The body tells the truth faster than language ever could. And in that truth, something breaks open. Not only because the dance is beautiful, but because it is honest.

This is what Alvin understood. That when the body is allowed to speak fully, it speaks for more than one life. It speaks for those who came before, and for those who are still learning how to stand.

In many companies, passion is reduced to a slogan. At Ailey, it is built into the structure. Love for the work produces rigour. Care for people produces longevity. Purpose produces resilience. The result is not only artistic success, but institutional durability.

Watching from the audience now, Alicia finds a fulfilment as deep as performance ever offered. She watches dancers step into themselves. She feels the room change as the audience rises. She recognises an artistry not measured by applause, but by the power of a dance company.

“I’m dancing a different way now,” she said.