Vanity Fair - “I Don’t Make Dance For Myself”: Jamar Roberts on Choreography, His Days At Alvin Ailey, And What Comes Next
After two decades, the acclaimed dancer has retired from the company where he made a huge splash in contemporary dance—but, as he explains to Vanity Fair, this is just the beginning. On a Monday afternoon in late November, Jamar Roberts, a longtime star of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, was standing in a studio at the company’s expansive, glass-walled school in midtown Manhattan. But instead of joining the group of barefoot and masked dancers as they rehearsed his piece “Holding Space,” Roberts wore cargo pants and kept on pair of black-and-white polka dot Converse. In August, the 39-year-old dancer announced his retirement from the company he’d been a part of since 2002. Now, he watched the rehearsal as choreographer.