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The National Center for Civil and Human Rights invites you to a special screening of Portrait of Ailey, a powerful documentary that examines the life, legacy, and contradictions of one of America’s most transformative cultural figures, Alvin Ailey.Through rare archival footage, intimate interviews, and the enduring language of movement, Portrait of Ailey explores how Ailey’s work emerged from the lived realities of Black life in America. Shaped by faith, trauma, beauty, discipline, and survival, the film asks what it meant for a Black artist from the Jim Crow South to build an institution that would carry Black stories onto the world’s most prestigious stages.
Following the screening, join us for a live conversation and audience Q&A featuring Alicia Graf Mack, Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and former Ailey star dancer, alongside two distinguished Atlanta-based scholars and cultural leaders: Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, author of Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement, 1944–1968 and Georgia and the Power of the Vote, and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Director of Public History and Historic Preservation at Morehouse College; and Dwight Andrews, Professor of Music Theory and African American Music at Emory University and pastor of First Congregational Church in Atlanta.
Together, the panel will engage Portrait of Ailey not simply as art, but as testimony—exploring the intersections of dance, music, faith, history, and Black cultural memory.
This one-night-only screening and conversation takes place on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, from 6:30–8:30 PM, with doors opening at 6:00 PM, in the Shirley Clarke Franklin Pavilion at the Center.
Admission is $12 for not-yet-members and $6 for members.
This event is presented in advance of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s separate performances at the Fox Theatre, taking place February 11–15, 2026.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
100 Ivan Allen Jr Blvd NW, Atlanta, GA, United States, Georgia 30313
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