Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to Atlanta for Black History Month performances at the Fox Theatre
A yearly Atlanta stop rooted in a long performance history
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is set to return to Atlanta’s Fox Theatre for a multi-day engagement running Feb. 11 through Feb. 15, 2026, aligning with Black History Month programming that has become a recurring fixture in the city’s cultural calendar.
The company’s relationship with Atlanta spans decades. The troupe has performed in the city nearly every year since 1976, building a tradition that ties touring repertory to an audience that has repeatedly embraced Ailey’s work—especially pieces that draw from African American cultural memory and music traditions.
Repertory that blends new choreography with signature works
This season’s Atlanta performances are expected to combine recently introduced works with established repertory. Among the newer pieces on tour is Embrace, choreographed by Frederick Earl Mosley and premiered in 2025. The work incorporates widely recognizable popular music selections, including artists such as Maxwell, Etta James, Stevie Wonder, and Ed Sheeran, reflecting the company’s broader approach of pairing contemporary soundscapes with concert dance vocabulary.
Another featured selection includes Blink of an Eye by Medhi Walerski, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The programming underscores the troupe’s range, moving between works shaped by African diasporic rhythms and those rooted in European classical composition.
Engagement dates: Feb. 11–15, 2026
Venue: Fox Theatre, Atlanta
Repertory mix: recent premieres alongside long-standing audience favorites
Why Black History Month remains central to the company’s identity
Founded in 1958, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has long positioned dance as a vehicle for cultural storytelling and public connection. Ailey’s best-known work, Revelations (1960), is structured around spirituals and depicts narratives shaped by hardship, faith, and communal perseverance within African American life.
Additional repertory frequently associated with the company’s Black History Month presence includes Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, which merges musical influences from Duke Ellington and Fela Kuti, reinforcing a dialogue between American jazz lineages and African modern sound.
The Atlanta engagement continues a performance pattern in which Black History Month serves not as a standalone theme but as a context for repertory that centers cultural heritage through music-driven movement and ensemble storytelling.
Leadership transition and continued touring emphasis
The 2026 season arrives under the company’s artistic leadership of Alicia Graf Mack, reflecting an ongoing emphasis on both repertory preservation and choreographic expansion. The Atlanta performances are positioned within a wider tour schedule that, in recent years, has regularly placed the Fox Theatre among key national stops during February.
For Atlanta audiences, the engagement represents both continuity and change: a return visit that echoes a decades-long tradition while presenting evolving repertory choices and new choreographic voices.