Alvin Ailey returns to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to showcase the Company’s superb artistry and astounding technical prowess. Ailey will present two programs, “Ailey Spirit” and “By Popular Demand,” both culminating with the beloved masterpiece Revelations.

In the “Ailey Spirit” program, BAM audiences will be the first in 35 years to see Ailey’s joyous ballet Mary Lou’s Mass. This new production coincides with the centennial celebration of jazz pioneer Mary Lou Williams, whose music inspired a work “perfect for Ailey” that is “a celebration of life, jazz and gospel” (The New York Times).

For more info and to purchase tickets, click here.

DanceAfrica, Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) longest running program — and one of America’s largest and most vibrant celebrations of African and African American dance, music, and culture — celebrated its 30th year in 2007. Created in 1977 to heighten awareness of African culture, the festival has evolved into a high-spirited Memorial Day Weekend tradition that brings together the entire community. Under the artistic direction of Founding Elder Chuck Davis, DanceAfrica features performances by traditional and contemporary dance companies from the African Diaspora in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, as part of the Spring Season.

This celebration, centered around the dance performances in the Opera House, also includes DanceAfrica master classes; the popular outdoor DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 250 vendors offering crafts, food, fashion, as well as outdoor performers; an art display at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place); a film series at BAM Rose Cinemas; and a dance party at BAMcafé with live music.

Dates: May 22nd to May 31st. Click here for more info.

About two weeks ago someone hit me up on Twitter and asked about African dance classes in Harlem. I didn’t have an answer for her so I sent out a tweet and got some great responses. I have to give a special thank you to Cassandra Nuamah, a Kukuwa Dance Workout instructor from New York Health and Racquet Club for sending me an email with lots of good info.

* * * FREE Classes Around Harlem * * *

• Mondays: 7-9pm, P.S. 198 (96th and 3rd)
• Tuesdays: 7-9pm, Wadleigh HS (114th Betwn Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton)
• Thursdays: 7-9pm, Wadleigh HS (114th Betwn Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton)
• Fridays: 6:30-8pm, Booker T Washington Middle School (in the gym), 103 west 108th street (107th street entrance btwn. Columbus and Amsterdam)

UPDATED: From the Comments

• There’s also a free West African dance class with Nafisa at Countee Cullen school (144th & 8th) on Mondays from 6:30-8:30 and Wednesdays from 6:30-8:30 (more advanced).

Other Classes Around NYC

Kukuwa Dance Workout at New York Health and Racquet Club every Wednesday at 7:15pm on 45th and Lexington. This class involves african, latin and carribean dance. (Only some classes are open to the public for a per class fee without membership. Call for more info.)

Alvin Ailey Extension — The famed Ailey Dance Theater has created a program of dance and fitness classes designed for the general public. The program is comprised of beginning to intermediate-level classes. In addition to traditional African Dance classes, they also teach Ballet, Yoga, Cuban Dance, Capoeira, Bhangra, Belly Dance and more. For more info, click here. (NOTE: Casandra Nuamah, the African Dance teacher who sent the email says that Monday and Thursday African Dance classes are EXCELLENT !!!)

New York Sports Clubs offers African Dance classes at various locations around the city with three classes a week at its Harlem locations. Wednesday: 8:00 pm at 125th Street location and Sunday: 3:30 pm 115th & 5th location and 5:00 pm 125th Street location. (Membership required. NOTE: They are currently running a special that is a great deal. 30 Days for $30 for a trial membership.)

Djoniba Dance Centre — provides an alternative in the fitness and dance world for the mind, body and soul by offering an array of exciting ethnic/African-based dance classes to the sound of live drums. For details, click here.

Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy — in partnership with the Church of St. Mark’s presents FREE Adult West African dance class Every Saturday Morning Through June 5, 2010, 7:45-9:15am at St. Mark’s Day School, 1346 President Street between Kingston and Brooklyn Aves. ( Take 2 or 5 train to President Street). RSVP by sending an email to arts@ifetayo.org

Did we miss something? If you know of more classes, please put them in the comments section below. Also, if you check out one of the classes, come back and tell us about it.

The Ay Que Funny Sketch Comedy Show, conceptualized, written, directed and produced by Jesenia Bailey and Crystal Roman, will play five performances at the National Comedy Theater (347 West 36th Street, between 8 & 9 Avenue) Thursdays at 8pm, for five weeks starting May 6, 2010.

The Spanglish NYC based sketch comedy show encourages the love of comedy thru off-the-wall sketches, portrayed by a culturally diverse cast, both onstage and in film. Each show features guest performances, spotlighting dance, music, stand-up comedy, and anything else that tickles!

Ay Que Funny plays the following schedule:

• Thursday, May 6 at 8 p.m.
• Thursday, May 13 at 8 p.m.
• Thursday, May 20 at 8 p.m.
• Thursday, May 27 at 8 p.m.
• Thursday, June 3 at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $15 and are available online at BrownPaperTickets.com or by calling 1-800-838-3006. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the National Comedy Theater (347 West 36th Street – Between 8th & 9th Ave’s.), 1 hour prior to the performance.

Bailey is a Nuyorican, Bronx native Comedienne/Actress/Writer/Performer/Director/Producer. She has performed stand-up comedy at various clubs throughout New York City, including the Laugh Factory & Caroline’s. She has also been acting in theater and film, performing both comedic and dramatic roles. In 2006, she cast in the inspirational feature film Gang Girl, in which she played a 16 year-old Bronx gang member trying to find her way out of gang life. In the film, The Big Wes, she was able to flex her comedic acting abilities by playing two very different roles.

Roman (Creator, Director, Performer) was born into an artistic family. Her great grandfather was a musician in the Duke Ellington band, and her uncle has played with Latin music legends the likes of the late Tito Puente, Santana, and Mark Anthony. She played the lead role in the film, A Weapon Most Unusual and recently completed production on the film Tangle Eye Blues. Last year, Roman wrote the play Black Latina about the lives of dark-skinned Latinas and African American Latinas. She is adapting the play into a feature film.

For more info, click here.

Featuring:

• Bodoma Garifuna (Honduras)
• IMPACT Repertory Theatre (U.S.A.)
• New York African Chorus (Continental Africa)
• Pauline Jean Trio (Haiti)
• Taeko & Gaika Mass Choir (Japan)
• Yoshi Amao & Samurai Crew (Japan)
• Keith “The Captain” Gamble (U.S.A.)
• Visual Artist & Photography video display of Harlem Arts Alliance member’s and member partner’s work

MCs: Yoshi Amao & Victor Burt

Date and Time: Friday, March 19, 2010 – 7:00pm

Location: Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem, 2309 Frederick Douglass Blvd (at 124th Street), 2nd Floor of the Magic Johnson Theatre

Price: $25 General Public & $20 Harlem Arts Alliance Members. Advance Ticket Purchase Recommended. To purchase, click here.

The 1st International Arts Festival is produced by the Harlem Arts Alliance in association with Joyce Ademumi and Kyoko Uchiki and is sponsored, in part, by the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corp., JP Morgan Chase, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce.

The Dance Theatre of Harlem will present their December Open House on December 13th at 3pm at the Everett Center for the Performing Arts, located on 466 W. 152nd Street (between Amsterdam and St. Nicholas Avenues). Tickets are $18 for adults and $14 for children (12 years old and under).

The program features performances by Students from the Dance Theatre of Harlem School and Members of the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble in excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” (Casse Noisette), excerpts from Billy Wilson’s jazz inflected masterpiece “Concerto in F” (Music: George Gershwin) and Lorna Myers Harlem Youth Chamber Ensemble (formerly the Girls Choir Of Harlem). The program will be followed by a special holiday reception with the artists.

A special feature on Sunday will be a booksigning of Beautiful Ballerina, a picture book featuring students from the DTH School, that will be available for holiday purchase. Beautiful Ballerina is written by award-winning author Marilyn Nelson and photographer Susan Kuklin who together showcase the beauty of the African-American dancer. In this picture-book narrative, young ballerinas from the Dance Theatre of Harlem are photographed in movement, revealing the beauty of ballet on every page.

For more information, please contact the Dance Theatre of Harlem at 212-690-2800.

On June 12, 2009, Gospel Uptown (GU) Harlem’s new entertainment and dining destination opened its doors at 2110 Seventh Ave between 125th & 126th Streets.

The restaurant’s website says that it offers a healthful Soul Fusion menu which “ventures beyond familiar soul and neo-soul offerings to create an array of choices transcending the traditional Southern offerings with creative contemporary combinations — flavors and styles from non-Southern genres; the result is a cuisine found nowhere else in Harlem.” There was no menu listed on the website so I’m not sure what specific dishes are being offered.

Leading the culinary team is Chef Kenneth Collins who calls his cooking style “multi-ethnic nouvelle.” Collins was previously the Executive Chef of Ida Mae’s Restaurant in midtown.

Gospel Uptown will also present a daily schedule of established performers and emerging artists, reflecting the influence Gospel has had on many genres of music, including Jazz, Hip-Hop, Blues, Latin, R&B and World Beat. Comedy, poetry, liturgical dance and musical theatre will also be featured on GU’s state-of – the art sound stage.

GU’s Founder/Owner is long-standing Harlem entrepreneur Joseph H. Holland. “With all GU has to offer, our vision is for this new entertainment/dining destination to become both a spur and symbol of Harlem’s Second Renaissance.”

GU’s entertainment showcase was launched with performances by Melba Moore. Also featured in June will be the Boys Choir of Harlem Alumni Choir in a special Father’s Day performance, gospel/jazz saxophonist Tyrone Birkett, Christian comedian Michael Goodhope, singer/performer Joey Fleming, Cuba Gooding, Sr.,  and others. For the entertainment calendar, click here.

GU serves Lunch: Monday-Friday 11:30am-3:00pm; Brunch: Saturday& Sunday 10:30am-4:00pm; Dinner: Sunday-Thursday 6:00pm-11:00pm, Friday and Saturday 6:00pm-Midnight; Reservations are Required. For More Information call 212-280-2110.

In celebration of the enormous contributions of women in the arts 651 ARTS dedicates its 20th Anniversary Season to women artists of African descent. The season concludes with a program featuring performances by some of the most influential Black contemporary dancer/choreographers in history: Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

These five dance legends will perform in FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance, May 30 and 31 at Long Island University’s Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts in Brooklyn.

As dancers, company-founders, and inspiration to countless others, these groundbreaking artists are first ladies in every sense of the word – they have helped shape the language and trajectory of contemporary dance, both in the U.S. and abroad, as they have continued to raise the artistic bar and inspire the contemporary dance world with vital work and fresh ideas.

CARMEN DE LAVALLADE — Carmen de Lavallade first appeared in NYC with the Lester Horton Dance Theatre and subsequently made her Broadway debut with Alvin Ailey in House of Flowers. She has appeared in a number of films for Twentieth Century Fox including Carmen Jones (1954), in which she danced with Ailey and Jack Cole. As a dancer she has had ballets created for her by Alvin Ailey, Lester Horton, John Butler, Glen Tetley, Agnes De Mille, Geoffrey Holder, Donald McKayle, Louis Johnson and Tally Beatty. She was a principle dancer with the Metropolitan Opera, a guest artist with American Ballet Theater and a soloist with the NYC Opera. In 1996, de Lavallade founded performance ensemble PARADIGM along with Gus Solomons, Jr. and which now includes Hope Clarke, Valda Setterfield, Keith Sabado and Michael Blake. As an actress, Ms. de Lavallade is currently appearing in the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters presented at Harlem Stage.

DIANNE MCINTYRE — Dianne McIntyre has developed a distinctive body of work that features an idiosyncratic use of music, a dynamic movement style, and important choreographic explorations of lives of Black Americans. In the 1970′s McIntyre emerged, among African Americans, as a new voice in the front line of modern dance. Dianne McIntyre’s Sounds in Motion company and school was a Harlem institution in the 1970′s and 80′s and served as a gathering place for artists – musicians, visual artists, poets, and theatre artists. Signature choreography for Sounds in Motion includes: Take-Off from a Forced Landing (1984), based on her mother’s stories as an aviator; Life’s Force (1979), a lively interaction of vibrant music and moves; Their Eyes Were Watching God (1986), based on the Zora Neale Hurston novel; and, Mississippi Talks, Ohio Walks (1984), nightclub vignettes of dance and Olu Dara’s Okra Orchestra. McIntyre was honored with the American Dance Festival 2008 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Chair for Distinguished Teaching and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship for Choreography.

BEBE MILLER — A native New Yorker, Bebe Miller has been making dances for over twenty-five years, and has created over forty original works for companies here and abroad. Her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition is a connecting thread throughout her work, and, in order to further a process of group inquiry, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. After two decades of national and international touring, the company is now structured as a “virtual company,” with dancers, collaborating artists and designers living in various locations around the U.S. In recent years, she has been investigating a mix of theatrical narrative, performance and design to expand this language, most notably in Landing/Place (2005) and Verge (2001), both works receiving New York Dance and Performance Awards (a.k.a. ‘The Bessies’). In 1999, she, along with choreographer Ralph Lemon and filmmaker Isaac Julien, completed the award-winning, collaborative film, Three. Miller has been honored with four Bessie (New York Dance and Performance) Awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an American Choreographer’s Award and Artist’s Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and New York Foundation for the Arts.

JAWOLE WILLA JO ZOLLAR — Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Founder and Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women was born and raised in Kansas City, MO. She trained with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham, and received a B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980, Zollar moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at her dance studio/company, Sounds in Motion. She founded Urban Bush Women in 1984. In addition to thirty-two works for UBW, Jawole has created choreography for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballet Arizona, Philadanco, University of Maryland, University of Florida, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and others.

Her many positions as a teacher and speaker include Worlds of Thought Resident Scholar at Mankato State University (1993-94), Regents Lecturer in the Departments of Dance and World Arts and Culture at UCLA (1995-96), Visiting Artist at Ohio State University (1996), and the Abramowitz Memorial Lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998). She was named Alumna of the Year by University of Missouri (1993) and Florida State University (1997), and awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Columbia College, Chicago (2002). In 2006, Zollar was recognized with a New York Dance & Performance Award, a ‘Bessie’, for her choreography of the Pearl Primus-inspired dance, Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries. Most recently Zollar was named a United States Artists ‘Wynn Fellow’.

Price: $25 | $30

Location: Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus (Flatbush Ave bet. DeKalb & Willoughby)

For more info, click here.

Evidence Dance Company
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BET and BET J will commemorate Black History Month with a lineup of gospel specials, black  film and original programming highlighting the   accomplishments of African Americans who have paved the way in music, film,  and entertainment.

BET will air a new film every  Sunday in February. As a part of the lineup, BET will premiere the  film A RAISIN IN THE SUN, starring Sean “Diddy” Combs, Phylicia  Rashad and Sanaa Lathan, on Sunday, February 15 at 5:00 p.m., and will  premiere MANDELA, a thought-provoking documentary of the story of  Nelson Mandela, told in his words on Sunday, February 1 at 3:00 p.m. The second annual BET HONORS hosted by Gabrielle  Union will air Monday, February 9 at 9:00 p.m.

BET J also delivers a lineup of specials and original shows.  INSIDE BLACK CULTURE will take viewers on an informational and historic  journey of Evidence Dance Company, the Studio Museum in  Harlem and Abyssinian Baptist Church Mondays at 9:00 p.m.  starting Monday, February 9. THE BEST SHORTS honors Black Hollywood when  emerging Black filmmakers make their cinematic mark with short  films on Sunday, February 1 from 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.*, and BLACK STORIES  portrays African American documentaries of profound stories on Tuesday,  February 3 at 8:00 p.m.

For more info on other BET/BET J Black History Month programming, click here.

Ubiquita NYC is back with the third instillation of Natural Progression in Harlem.

Ubiquita is a movement of people from the worlds of art, fashion, film, music and everyday folks who converge around a common love of urban alternative music and lifestyle.

For their anniversary celebration, they have created a multi-media performance illuminating the artist’s journey through the urban underground. This production depicts the evolution of underground music told through music, dance and spoken-word. Live music by Imani Uzuri and Fertile Ground and choreography by Camille A. Brown, as well as featuring a veritable Who’s Who in the evolution of spoken word including Sharif Simmons, Second 2 Last Poets, Iowan Tribal & Brad Walrond.

Natural Progression, ACT III will be presented Sunday, November 9, 7:00pm at the Aaron Davis Hall’s Marian Anderson Theater at 150 Convent Avenue at West 135th Street.

Tickets for ACT III are $25, including two beverages. For more information, contact Harlem Stage at 212-281-9240 ext. 19 or click here.

In this new musical, directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones with a book by Jim Lewis and arrangements by Aaron Johnson and Antibalas, audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), Fela! explores his controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of Fela’s most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones’s imaginative staging, this new show is a provocative hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater.

For more info and to purchase tickets, click here.

For more info, click here.