Auditorium Theatre 2021-2022, Issue 3, Alvin Ailey

16 | AUDITORIUM THEATRE :: ALVIN AILEY About the Company continued ROBERT BATTLE continued was named a 2015 visiting fellow for The Art of Change, an initiative by the Ford Foundation. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and has addressed a number of high-profile organizations, including the United Nations Leaders Programme and the UNICEF Senior Leadership Development Programme. MATTHEW RUSHING, Associate Artistic Director Matthew Rushing was born in Los Angeles, California. He began his dance training with Kashmir Blake in Inglewood, California, and continued his training at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. He is the recipient of a Spotlight Award and a Dance Magazine Award and was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He was a scholarship student at The Ailey School and later became a member of Ailey II. During his career Mr. Rushing has performed as a guest artist for galas in Vail, Colorado, as well as in Austria, Canada, France, Italy, and Russia. He has performed for Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as well as at the 2010 White House Dance Series. During his time with the Company, he has choreographed four ballets: Acceptance In Surrender (2005), a collaboration with Hope Boykin and Abdur-Rahim Jackson; Uptown (2009), a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance; ODETTA (2014), a celebration of “the queen of American folk music”; and Testament (2020), a tribute to Alvin Ailey’s Revelations created in collaboration with Clifton Brown and Yusha-Marie Sorzano. In 2012 he created Moan, which was set on Philadanco and premiered at The Joyce Theater. Mr. Rushing joined the Company in 1992, became Rehearsal Director 2010, and became Associate Artistic Director in January 2020. JUDITH JAMISON, Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1965 and quickly became an international star. Over the next 15 years, Mr. Ailey created some of his most enduring roles for her, most notably the tour-de- force solo Cry. During the 1970s and 80s she appeared as a guest artist with ballet companies all over the world, starred in the hit Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies, and formed her own company, The Jamison Project. She returned to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1989 when Mr. Ailey asked her to succeed him as Artistic Director. In the 21 years that followed, she brought the Company to unprecedented heights—including two historic engagements in South Africa and a 50-city global tour to celebrate the Company’s 50th anniversary. Ms. Jamison is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them a primetime Emmy Award, an American Choreography Award, a Kennedy Center Honor, a National Medal of Arts, a Bessie Award, the Phoenix Award, and the Handel Medallion. She was also listed in “The TIME 100: The World’s Most Influential People” and honored by First Lady Michelle Obama at the first White House Dance Series event. In 2015 she became the 50th inductee into the Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Dance. In 2016 she received the Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fred and Adele Astaire Awards. As a highly regarded choreographer, Ms. Jamison has created many celebrated works, including Divining (1984), Forgotten Time (1989), Hymn (1993), HERE... NOW. (commissioned for the 2002 Cultural Olympiad), Love Stories (with additional choreography by Robert Battle and Rennie Harris, 2004), and Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places, 2009). Ms. Jamison’s autobiography, Dancing Spirit, was edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and published in 1993. In 2004, under Ms. Jamison’s artistic directorship, her idea of a permanent home for the Ailey company was realized and named after beloved chairman emerita Joan Weill. Ms. Jamison continues to dedicate herself to asserting the prominence of the arts in our culture and she remains committed to promoting the significance of the Ailey legacy—using dance as a medium for honoring the past, celebrating the present, and fearlessly reaching into the future. BENNETT RINK, Executive Director Bennett Rink became Executive Director of Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation in 2013. Mr. Rink first joined Ailey as Manager of Special Events in 1994, became Development Director in