Women in AILEY's Repertory

This Women’s History Month, AILEY is spotlighting five incredible choreographers whose works are currently in the repertory during the National tours of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II.  

Hope Boykin

Hope Boykin is a two-time Bessie Award winner who has choreographed for PHILADANCO!, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, and the Philadelphia Ballet, among many others. She danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 20 years, beginning in 2000. During Boykin’s tenure with the Company, The New York Times singled her out as a “force of nature on stage.” As a choreographer, she followed in Alvin Ailey’s footsteps; in 2022, she choreographed Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at the Kennedy Center for the theater’s 50th anniversary, five decades after Mr. Ailey choreographed Mass for the Center’s opening. Boykin has choreographed four works for the Company, including Go in Grace, r-Evolution, Dream, and her most recent work, Finding Free, a collaboration between pianist and composer Matthew Whitaker that she said is about “finding freedom not through removing obstacles, but in learning how to carry them.” 

Amy Hall Garner

Amy Hall Garner is a versatile talent. As an internationally renowned choreographer, she moves seamlessly between commissions from modern to ballet with companies like Paul Taylor Dance Company and New York City Ballet to choreographing for musical theater and Beyoncé’s The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. She trained at the Juilliard School before beginning a career as a dancer on Broadway, working with legends including Gwen Verdon, Ann Reinking, and Susan Stroman. In 2012, she choreographed Virtues for Ailey II, a work that The Ailey School regularly performs to this day. Her first major commissions came right as the COVID pandemic began shutting companies down, but she found ways to keep working and choreographed for digital performances. In 2023, Garner made her first work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, CENTURY. The ballet was conceived of as a birthday present for her grandfather, who turned 100 that year and it is also “a tribute to Mr. Ailey and his theatricality.” 

Elisa Monte

Elisa Monte made her stage debut at age 11, in a revival of Agnes De Mille’s Carousel. She went on to work as a principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company for eight years. Monte also danced with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and Pilobolus. As a choreographer, she brought her controlled, athletic, sensual signature movement style to commissioned works for Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and PHILADANCO!, and many others. In 1981, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater acquired Monte’s work Treading into repertory, and it has returned as a new production for the 2024-25 season. The work coincided with the rise of many powerhouse women dancing with the Company—April Berry, Sarita Allen, Sara Yarborough, and Linda Spriggs to name a few. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times wrote, “the truth is that the women have it over the men at this stage of the company's development.” Monte was later commissioned to create two new works for the Company: Pigs and Fishes in 1982 and Mnemonic Verses in 1994. 

Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish

Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish moved to New York in 1979 from Manila, where she was the youngest member of Ballet Philippines. Having worked with choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Katherine Dunham, Jerome Robbins, Talley Beatty, Lar Lubovitch, John Butler, Ulysses Dove, and Judith Jamison during her dance career, it’s no wonder that Roxas-Dobrish was named one the 500 most influential Asian Americans by Avenue Magazine in 1997. She danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 13 years, beginning in 1984, and during her time with the Company The New York Times described her as “a cool, still, lyrical center of the Ailey storm.” Roxas-Dobrish received her first AILEY commission in 2022 for Ailey II, mediAcation, and the following year she made her first work for the main company: Me, Myself and You.  

Judith Jamison

Alvin Ailey American Theater’s most lauded performer and one of Alvin Ailey’s most cherished friends and collaborators, Judith Jamison also cemented her reputation as a remarkable choreographer by the time she took the reins of the Company following Mr. Ailey’s death. Before she became artistic director in 1989, she made her choreographic debut in 1984 with Divining (the original cast featured Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish). Of its premiere, The New York Times wrote that Divining “has two surprising and distinctive aspects. One is a total mastery of form by a novice choreographer and the other is the invention of movement shapes and movement quality that give the piece a fascinating originality.” Ms. Jamison would go on to make many exceptional works for the Company but Divining—with an excerpt currently being performed by Ailey II—still possesses that spark of original inspiration that comes from a choreographer’s first work.