See Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s return to Boston

The dance company celebrating American modern dance and African-American cultural heritage returns to Boston this month.

Dancers from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform. Celebrity Series of Boston.

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The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater began with a modern dance performance by a group of young Black dancers helmed by Alvin Ailey in New York in 1958. Since then, the company has performed for an estimated 25 million people at shows throughout the world. This spring’s performance at the Wang Theatre marks the company’s first return to Boston since the start of the pandemic.

Renowned dancer Alvin Ailey was born in the rural south in 1931. After becoming the director of the Lester Horton Dance Theater and performing in a handful of Broadway shows in the 1950s, Ailey started his own dance company in 1958, focused on the particular dance heritage and uniqueness of the African-American experience.

To train world-class dancers, Ailey launched the Ailey School in Brooklyn in 1969, and to introduce emerging dancers and talented young choreographers, he began Ailey II in 1974.

For his contributions to civil rights, American culture, and dance, Alvin Ailey received both a Kennedy Center Honor in 1988 before his death in 1989, and a posthumous Presidential Medal of Honor in 2014.

A 2008 Congressional resolution designated the company as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world,” preserving and celebrating the African-American cultural experience through dance.

Today, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is led by artistic director Robert Battle and will tour the country through this May. Attendees can expect a host of new and classic works at their shows, alongside the company’s signature Revelations, created by Ailey of his memories from the Deep South, with blues and gospel influences.