After a year of solo practices and virtual performances, dancers are back on stage doing what they do best: performing in front of live audiences. But for some of the field’s biggest and most transformative stars, choreographing the future of an art form steeped in tradition means leaving some things in the past.
Courtney Celeste Spears is keeping company with legends. She was selected by her company Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and among a number of dance legends photographed for Harper’s Bazaar’s August issue.
Today, Zoey Anderson, Corey John Snide, and I are all professional dancers thriving in the industry. But we were once anxious, excited young college students in NYC, hoping to make it big. The three of us graced the September 2013 Dance Spirit Higher Ed Issue cover together. Anderson graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in 2015, the same year Snide graduated from The Juilliard School; I completed the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in 2016. Recently, we reconnected to talk about how we've grown over the years.
Dancer, actress, model, writer, entrepreneur, teacher and now businesswoman: Courtney Celeste Spears, Fordham College at Lincoln Center '16, is a master at turning her dreams into reality and is determined to use her platform to change the world.
The Ailey organization manifests founder Alvin Ailey’s belief that “dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people” with Ailey All Access, a series of digital dance offerings including online streaming of performances, dance and fitness classes, educational programs and original short films created by the Ailey dancers.
In this uncertain time, dancers have a useful perspective: Gently loosen those joints and muscles as much as you can, firm your self-discipline, calm your mind. Dancer wisdom teaches us that life is live theater, forever an improv performance, and we can feel our way through it by establishing a routine, caring for our whole selves and also turning outward, to care for those around us. Yet performing careers are brief, and no dancer can afford to lose time — or money. The recently interrupted tours, canceled premieres, locked studios and social distancing requirements have hit the financially fragile, socially enmeshed dance world hard. When your life revolves around lifting, leaping, catching, jumping and otherwise spending time (often literally joined at the hip) with your dance partners, how do you deal with solitary confinement?
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre returns to the fabulous Fox Theatre February 20-23.
Learning Versatility, Summer by Summer: Courtney Celeste Spears. When Courtney Celeste Spears was young, she'd ask her family to skip the Christmas presents: "Just help me go to this intensive," she'd say.
In an ode to freedom of expression, Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli commissioned poets Greta Bellamacina, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Robert Montgomery, and Mustafa the Poet for original work, which was collected in a slim volume called On Love. Selections, like 23-year-old Grammy winner Mustafa's poignant line, pictured above, appear on the clothing itself. The gist: love triumphs. The notion resonates with Alvin Ailey dancer Courtney Celeste Spears, currently closing out an international tour.
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Ravens tackle Brandon Williams stepped off the football field and onto the stage to show off his dance moves this week with Alvin Ailey's Courtney Celeste Spears at Henderson-Hopkins Elementary School.