Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater bring their Legacy programme to Sadler's Wells, 16 to 19 September 2026.
Alvin Ailey started his company in New York in 1958 because the American ballet companies of the day would not hire Black dancers, and in 1960 he made Revelations — thirty-six minutes set to spirituals and gospel, drawn from what he called the blood memories of his Texas childhood. It has been danced more than any other work of modern dance, anywhere, and it is still how the company ends an evening. Ailey died in 1989 at forty-eight; the company kept his name and his repertoire and became one of the largest in the world.
Legacy is the half of the London visit that carries that inheritance: the Ailey repertory itself, and the works by others the company has kept in rotation long enough to own. The company has been directed since 2011 by Robert Battle and then Alicia Graf Mack, both of whom danced in it.
It runs at Sadler’s Wells from Wednesday 16 to Saturday 19 September 2026, against the New Works bill on the same four nights, so the two programmes must be chosen between rather than seen in sequence. Four performances is the whole engagement. If you have never seen the company, this is the bill to take: Revelations is one of the few pieces in any repertoire that a first-time audience and a lifelong one watch for the same reasons.