Ailey II's 2013 New York Season Will Run 3/13-24

The alternating Returning Favorites program begins with the return of 2007's The External Knot by Ailey II Artistic Director Troy Powell. This modern work follows the journey of a young man and his internal battle to assert his independence from others. A fluid series of solos, duets, and ensemble sections build to a climax with transporting music by Philip Glass and Robert Schumann.

Alvin Ailey's 1968 Quintet choreographed to the timeless songs of Laura Nyro, Quintet was thematically the first of its kind created by Alvin Ailey. In Ailey's biography, noted former The New York Times dance writer Jennifer Dunning said, "Quintet is in its way a small masterwork...Like Reflections in D, the piece was an imaginative and sensitive reading of its score, and it offered yet more proof of Alvin's distinctive gift for blending serious choreography and themes with affectionate teasing of his characters. In the new piece, however, Alvin explored for the first time the private being behind a highly public face, a subject he would return to repeatedly."

The Returning Favorites program will close with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison'sDivining. Divining was Jamison's first major work as a choreographer for the Ailey Company, created in 1984 at the request of her mentor, Alvin Ailey. Set to a score of North African, Central African, and Latin rhythms, Divining builds on African dance idioms to create a striking, pulsating modern dance work.