Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater bring their New Works programme to Sadler's Wells, 15 to 19 September 2026.
Alvin Ailey founded his company in New York in 1958, with a group of Black dancers and almost no money, at a point when American ballet companies would not employ them. Two years later he made Revelations, a thirty-six-minute suite set to spirituals and gospel that has since been performed more than any other modern dance work anywhere, and which the company still closes with. Ailey died in 1989. The company he left is now among the largest in the world and has its own building on West 55th Street.
The London visit splits across two bills, and this is the newer of them. New Works is what the company commissions rather than what it inherits — the choreographers it is betting on, given a full evening rather than a slot. Ailey trained under Lester Horton in Los Angeles and took over Horton’s company when he died, which is why the technique these dancers carry is a distinct school rather than borrowed ballet.
It runs at Sadler’s Wells from Tuesday 15 to Saturday 19 September 2026, and the Legacy programme runs against it from the 16th, so four of the five nights offer a choice between the two. Ailey has been coming to Sadler’s Wells for decades and the visits have become the theatre’s most reliably sold week of the autumn. Worth knowing, before deciding to leave the booking.