I’m honored to have choreographed Flight for the Junior Division at the Alvin Ailey Summer Intensive 2025, a deeply collaborative work created alongside Berlin-based sound artist Zen Jefferson.
Flight is a sonic and emotional journey through anxiety, healing, reckoning, and return — themes that resonate profoundly today. Zen’s sound collage draws from his memories of the Ailey Summer Intensive and our shared roots as Juilliard classmates from New York. Together, we crafted a piece that bridges past and present, cities and selves, art and ancestry.
At the heart of Flight is the voice of poet and activist Audre Lorde, whose Litany for Survival guides us through fear, vulnerability, and truth with a quiet yet powerful force. Her words become a compass, reminding us that speaking despite fear is itself an act of survival and flight.
The soundscape layers diverse influences: Afro-Brazilian rhythms from Nilton Castro’s As Ondas (Les Vagues), evoking djembe pulses foundational to Alvin Ailey’s Horton technique; the intense digital textures of M.E.S.H’s Optimate, channeling anxiety’s tactile presence; and Philip Glass’s Japurá River, performed by Uakti, bringing a flowing, elemental sense of renewal and release.
Flight is a meditation rooted in the Black American dance tradition and the legacy of Alvin Ailey — a work that honors survival, transformation, and the power of movement as a form of storytelling and healing.
I’m deeply grateful to Zen Jefferson and all the artists whose voices and rhythms shape this work, as well as to the incredible Junior Division dancers who brought Flight to life with heart and courage.