In the African American dance scene embodying grace and grit, Isabel Wallace-Green’s journey from a performing arts student to her artistry in the theaters of her wildest dreams is one to be remembered.
Born and raised in our vibrant H-Town, Wallace-Green has traveled far and wide. From her dance training days at the Houston Ballet Academy, graduating summa cum laude from The Ailey/Fordham BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) program with a degree in Dance and African/African American Studies, and the spotlight of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Wallace-Green’s resume is a testament to her dedication and undeniable talent. She broadened her dance training at programs with Boston Ballet School, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M., as well.
Her artistic odyssey was forged at The Ailey School, where she honed her craft, blending technical prowess with a cultural resonance. She has also performed with New Chamber Ballet and Urban Souls Dance Company and was an ensemble member of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
Her show, Resilience, was Wallace-Green’s series of self-choreographed solos and a concoction of themes of African American identity and culture in collaboration with the University of Houston and Texas Southern University art museums. She attempted to explore the realities around her — a biracial Black American artist at one with the exhibition, through immersive storytelling tools.
Wallace-Green joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2023, her passion for the art was imbued with a poignant significance against the backdrop of Mr. Ailey’s legacy, a trailblazer whose visionary choreography transformed the landscape of American modern dance.
Born in rural Texas, Ailey’s lived experience shaped his artistic vision, allowing him to infuse African-American culture and the rhythms of the South with dance. He founded the Company in 1958, marking a watershed moment in establishing a platform for the celebration and preservation of African American heritage.
His activism in fighting racial injustice through dance at the height of Jim Crow, having spent his childhood in extreme financial vulnerability with no father figure and accompanying his mother picking cotton in fields. Still a child, he joined his mother in Los Angeles in search of better job opportunities. He discovered theater as a teenager and fell in love with it, but saw no one who looked like him on stage. Ailey took it upon himself to change history, inspired by two instrumental people in his life — Lester Horton and Katherine Dunham. And he did.
Ailey’s legacy lives on through the members of his troupe, like Wallace-Green, serving as a beacon of light for generations of Black dancers to come who can carry forward his torch of creativity, inclusivity, and social consciousness.
From March 7 – 9, Houston will get to experience some electrifying performances from the group, including Ailey’s iconic creation Revelations. In the program will also be Kyle Abraham’s Are You In Your Feelings?, Jamar Roberts’ Ode, Following the Subtle Current Upstream by Alonzo King Lines, and Dancing Spirit by Ronald K. Brown.
Here’s the Defender’s exclusive interview!
Defender: Tell us more about your upcoming performances in Houston next month!
Wallace-Green: I’m super excited. We’ll be in Houston from March 7th through 9th, and it’s going to be so special for me to return to my hometown. This is actually the first time I’m performing as a professional back in Houston. The last time I was performing there, I was still in school, still evolving. It’s going to be great to share with family and friends and my Greater Houston community. Every show will include Alvin Ailey’s iconic Revelations, which I know audiences everywhere are excited to see. But we also have some returning favorites, particularly Kyle Abraham’s Are You In Your Feelings?, which is a piece that I’ll be performing as well. That’s a really fun one, it includes current-day R&B (rhythm and blues) soul music. I personally love it because we’re singing along backstage, and the audience sings along in the audience . It just gets everyone involved.
Then there are some new productions that will be restaged, like Ode by former Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts. It’s a really beautiful contemporary piece that reflects on gun violence. We have Dancing Spirit by Ronald K. Brown, which is a piece that honors iconic Ailey dancer and former artistic director Judith Jamison and pulls on more African-based movements. Lastly, on the program, we have Following the Subtle Current Upstream by Alonzo King Lines, which is a returning piece that’s really beautiful, really technical, but also speaks to natural elements in the world and the forces that we all embody internally to come together as a community. So, it’s a pretty eclectic program that I know audiences will fall in love with. I’m excited!
Defender: Tell us about your childhood and what inspired you to become a dancer.
Wallace-Green: I grew up in Houston in the Heights, and from the early age of six, I started dancing. My mom put me in classes, first at a local spot in the Heights, and then shortly after, I went to the Houston Ballet Academy. She found that because my cousin actually grew up dancing there too. She decided that if I was going to dance, I was going to be serious about it and get quality training. I thought it was really difficult and I thought the teachers were strict at first. My mom said, “If at the end of the year you don’t like it, then you can quit.”
But by the end of the year, I was sold, I was invested in it. I spent nine years there, We were able to perform The Nutcracker for the company downtown at the Wortham Theater. I got a really exceptional education there. Later, I attended St. John’s School and danced there, and then I went to New York to join The Ailey School and Fordham University, which has a really neat BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) program where you can attend two institutions at once.
I fell in love with the company. I had seen them perform when they toured Houston when I was a child, but there, I really got an up-close look at how the company works and all the things they’re involved in. From there, it became a goal to be a part of the company. And just seeing how thoughtful and expressive all the professional dancers were there, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.
Defender: What do you think about the Black dance theater scene and its audience demographics not just in Texas but also across the U.S.?
Wallace-Green: Every city we go to is different. In some cities, we have a lot of audience members who are people of color, and then other cities, we don’t. It’s beautiful to see how both audiences are so receptive to the same messages. In every city we go to, regardless of the demographics, when we open for Revelations, the curtain rises and the music’s playing, you automatically hear applause. Regardless of who is in the audience, they’re still so open and understanding and connecting to the messages that we share.
Many of these communities are so generous, welcoming, and excited that we’re there. It shapes my view as an individual, and as an artist, but also our connection with them will broaden the audience’s experience. We don’t always know who’s in the audience, but especially coming out backstage after the show and meeting audience members, you can tell that what we do is transforming minds, it’s really making an impact on the communities that we visit, and that’s beautiful to watch because simultaneously they’re making impacts on us.
Defender: You have a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in dance and African American Studies. How do these disciplines influence your art form today?
Wallace-Green: Ailey is a historically African American company, I think the two studies were something that I was always interested in. My parents are visual artists and are also interested in the history of arts and culture. It was something I kind of grew up around.
I’ve always been interested in how art informs and can be a voice of social justice, and particularly looking at the African American experience and history, there’s so much resilience, there’s a lot of pain, but there’s also triumph and resilience that create the people that we are today. As someone who loves the arts and finds expression through that performance medium, it only felt natural to pull on the ties that we have from this broader African American experience.
That’s something that really drew me to Ailey and Mr. Ailey’s work because he oftentimes reflects on his own childhood upbringing or things that are happening more broadly in the world to people, things of injustice, things of triumphant stories, things of resilience. It’s really awesome for us as artists to be able to see that narrative from the outside because most of the things he created were events that I wasn’t physically there to experience, but now I can still use my view and my identity, add another layer to that story, and then also see how these stories still apply to our world today.
Defender: Ailey was an activist and fought against racial injustice at the height of Jim Crow at that time. Times change, and so do art forms and the messaging behind them. What do the present performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater stand for today?
Wallace-Green: Growing up from my teenage to adulthood in the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID, and the racial inequities that came to light during that time, it’s incredible because the message still rings true. It still rings strong. Our company and the dancing that we do really serve as a reminder that we are a predominantly Black company, but Mr. Ailey, at the heart of his message, wanted us to be accessible to everyone. It wasn’t strictly about race or the Black experience, but every person who witnesses an Ailey performance or anyone who’s involved in the company who may not share those identities can still relate to the messages, to the basic calls of humanity.
His message has become more accessible to more people and invites people of all backgrounds to not only enjoy and witness artistic expression but also a call to action to be involved in our communities today to strive for strengthening communities. Whatever that might look like for an individual will differ, but I think it’s really about, especially in a time where our world is so divided that this art form serves to bring people together and to strengthen, whether that’s just for an audience member to be able to connect to someone they didn’t know before. A million little connections will eventually strengthen the broader community. There are a multitude of ways that that can happen but for me, it’s really the communal aspect and the constant drive and desire to strengthen our world, to bring unity and peace in a time where there’s so much that is not unified.
Defender: What would you consider your greatest and the most memorable performance to date?
Wallace-Green: The most memorable for me will be the very first time I performed Revelations as a member of the company. I just joined the company, and my first performance was in August. We went to Edinburgh, Scotland, and it was my first time touring internationally with the company. It was a lot of firsts. Revelations is a piece that I’ve watched the company perform ever since I was a kid. To be up there and to be a part of a legacy that I’ve witnessed and so many generations before me have been a part of and witnessed was truly something very surreal.
It requires a lot of vulnerability. The opening section, “I Been ‘Buked,” has a rather simple movement, but to do it with that collective on stage and to be so vulnerable and open and share about this communal experience of our ancestors, but also of present-day people, was just something that I think I’ll never forget. It’s an accomplishment and an achievement for myself naturally to be a part of the company finally, but also just an honor to be able to share something that I love so dearly. The most important, I would say this past City Center season in New York, which is for five weeks, is rather grueling. I had the honor to perform the lead in Alvin Ailey’s Memoria, which is a beautiful work that’s a tribute to his friend, mentor, and inspiration, Joyce Trisler, who was also a dancer and shared a lot of knowledge with generations of her day.
And she passed on rather early, and it was very emotional for Mr. Ailey. So he created this work tribute to her. It’s a special work because it’s one of the few Ailey works that involve students of the school as well. I was able to perform in it when I was a student, and then had the honor of doing a role that newer members in the company do that requires a little less dancing. And then I also got to perform the lead, which is very challenging work. It’s very technical, but given the nature of the story of Ms. Trisler, it’s also very emotive and it requires a lot of artistry. To be able to do that, dive into it, and explore it during my first season was something I wasn’t expecting.
As a student, we wanna be perfect in everything, but as you dive into the professional world, you realize that’s not realistic. It was really beautiful to watch that journey of me letting go of the pressures that I put on myself and figuring out how to be an artist that I’ve looked up to for so long and how to get a little closer to that. So, it’s a piece that has meant a lot to me.
Defender: Having performed in various parts of the country, where do you like performing the most? Which place has taught you the most and has been the most meaningful?
Wallace-Green: I’ll say both New York and Dallas. I was a part of Dallas Black Dance Theater for two years, and that was my first professional concert dance company experience. It taught me a lot. It’s a smaller company. They kind of throw you into the fire because there aren’t a ton of seniors, so you just have to step up to the plate. I gained a lot in terms of how I want to operate as a professional dancer, how I am going to work on being diligent at work, but also taking care of my body outside of work.
While I was there, I also had many dancers, many people that I looked up to and could learn from up close and personal, which was nice. That first exposure prepared me later to come back to New York, where I went to college. Now, I’m returning as a member of Ailey. It holds so much sentimental value for me, it’s the city of dreams, but it can be really grueling and overwhelming at the same time, given the nature of the city, the busyness and hectic nature of life there. But to be able to perform in that city specifically, I never take that for granted because I remember the days when I would walk past the theaters as a younger person and hope that one day I could get there and make it inside the theaters. To know that that’s my reality now is just such a beautiful and fulfilling reminder. Of course, there’s so much more that I hope to achieve and grow in as an artist.
Defender: What message would you like to share with Black dancers who are starting out in the field today?
Wallace-Green: Don’t shy away from the fact that other people don’t look like you. That doesn’t mean that you can’t pursue, succeed and excel in it. I’m still learning to work on believing in myself and being my greatest cheerleader, especially in a performing arts world that can oftentimes be competitive. We as individuals have so much influence on our destinies and on our paths. Just by believing and trusting that we are capable of doing what we want and making happen what we want to achieve. You have all the abilities to make anything you want come true. Of course, there are gonna be obstacles, and perhaps what you want may not come at the time that you want, but if you keep working at it, it may even manifest in a different light in a way that you didn’t intend or see. The ultimate thing is that you have to believe and keep working, being diligent, and showing up for yourself because the second you stop showing up for yourself, it’s all over. Hmm. I would encourage people, whether you’re a dancer or not, to continue chasing after that dream because so many people before us have fought for that, but they’ve also made it happen. So there’s no reason that you as an individual can’t either.
