Wow, that’s beautiful, Alicia! So, in light of your wide-ranging accomplishments, what do you think gave you the tools to be the kind of leader you are?

I think that is the bedrock of it all. Having been part of the company, having known the organization, having a great understanding of the mission and spirit of the organization, that set the terms, because when I started my career in higher education and in leadership, I took all of those values that I learned from dancing with Ailey into my work.

And that helped to strengthen how I like to lead—through a lens of access, of inclusivity, of excellence—and when I had the privilege to work with young dancers who were on the precipice of their careers, I knew exactly how to encourage them with very intentional coaching and technical information. 

I also have a deep interest in administration and organizational culture and behavior, so I think that my artistic sensibilities and my strategic and business curiosities have also helped to shape the leader that I am today. I feel very supported by everyone within the Ailey organization, and the team of artistic leaders that I work with are also dancers that I worked with during my time as a performer. It all feels very aligned, and I'm so excited as we step into this new era.

How do you think your experience as a former Ailey dancer helped shape the way you approach artistic direction today?

I came into the company with the dancers already being so excellent. The mark of an Ailey dancer, for me, is one who has a very deep understanding of technical virtuosity and artistic freedom. And I think that in so many ways, Miss Jamison also believed that. She used to say, “We're looking for dancers with a classical lower body in terms of legs and feet, and a modern dance torso.”

So, it’s someone who really understands many different technical languages on the highest level but has a freedom of movement and a very keen sense of musicality. We’re always looking for dancers who are uniquely different. There is no one Ailey dancer that is the same, and that remains true today. And our dancers come from all over the world. They represent many different races, backgrounds, body types. I think that's so important because we always want to represent the people.

And when audience members or young people come to see the Ailey company, we want to see them represented somehow on stage. I think that keeps the legacy moving forward, the pipeline of artists and young people wanting to pursue a life in dance that helps to propel their dreams—when you see some spark on stage and you can connect with that.

It's always very important to stay grounded in the aesthetic and the original idea that Mr. Ailey wanted to give a platform for Black culture and a Black aesthetic through a very universal language of dance.

In L.A., you’ll be doing two different programs, including a new production of Miss Jamison’s “A Case of You,” and three pieces new to L.A.—Fredrick Earl Mosley’s “Embrace,” Matthew Neenan’s “Difference Between” and “The Holy Blues,” a collaboration between Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Samantha Figgins and Chalvar Monteiro. There’s also a company premiere, Mehdi Walerski’s “Blink of an Eye.” How do these works speak to the troupe’s evolving identity under your leadership?

The idea that Mr. Ailey set so many years ago in 1958, when he founded the company, he not only wanted to have a platform for his own choreography, for his own blood memories, as we always refer to the works that he created, especially his early works that were inspired by his life growing up in Rogers, Texas, and in his early life in Los Angeles, but also wanted to create a platform for other choreographers to showcase their work, specifically choreographers of color.

Mr. Ailey was ahead of his time, because if you think about all the modern dance companies that were finding their footing [then], they were only rooted in that artist's choreography: Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, the Limón Company, all of these companies only performed the works of their founder.

But Mr. Ailey, from the beginning, had this idea about innovating and bringing new voices into the fold, not only to give those choreographers a space to create, but also to stretch the dancers beyond his own choreography. So, this is the blueprint that we follow today in 2026. I feel so empowered by his bravery and by his vision. 

While we have many of his works actively in our repertory, every year we find new choreographers to set work on the company, so that we are always stretching and expanding, and are always setting the bar for excellence and diversity in the field. And there are no other 32 dancers that can go from a Ron Brown’s “Grace,” that fuses West African movement and modern dance, to Mehdi Walerski's very contemporary European ballet, to Miss Jamison’s work, to Mr. Ailey’s very rooted modern dance language. That gives us the extremely varied palate to try anything.