Jamar Roberts's Second Act

"Roberts, who is forty-two and grew up in Miami, joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at nineteen and danced there for nearly two decades, until 2021. He began to make dances in 2016, and his early choreography-astonishingly original and powerful-was inextricably tied to his own dancing and the ways he could morph his majestic six-foot-four body as if it were molten."

"I have rarely seen a dancer who projects such humility and calm while sustaining an intense physicality and focus on movement itself. And, although his choreography frequently treats political themes, he is a pure dance formalist. This creates a tension in his work: he doesn't make statements; he makes dances, and his best political work is expressed through the abstract movement that characterizes his dancing. A choreographer in a dancer's skin."

Jamar Roberts is a highly sought choreographer with commissions from ballet and modern companies and two New York world premieres this season. His work frequently addresses political themes, including gun violence, COVID isolation, protest, and climate change. He created Foreseeable Future for New York City Ballet to confront climate change and to disrupt ballet's escapist, perfectionist tendencies. He read a newspaper report about climate protesters disrupting an N.Y.C.B. performance, found it rude to dancers, but also felt the protesters were partly right. Roberts trained at Alvin Ailey, danced nearly two decades, began choreographing in 2016, and often ties choreography to his own large, malleable body.

Read at The New Yorker