The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater gala on Tuesday was the biggest in the event’s 11-year history, adding 250 more guests than last year and expanding beyond the south gallery into two additional rooms on the roof of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The influx of guests required event co-chairs Debra Lee, Carolyn Brody, and Gina Adams to rethink the configuration of the dinner. “They needed to figure out where you put what in the floor plan,” said Carolyn Peachey, president of Campbell Peachey & Associates, who helped produced the event with the co-chairs and Josephine Ciallella, an event consultant for Alvin Ailey.
One of the most important components for the gala’s floor plan? Where to put the band and dance floor for the young, ready-to-dance crowd, which included honorary co-chairs Mayor Adrian Fenty and Michelle Cross Fenty. In order to be accessible to the largest number of tables, the dance floor and stage for the Free Spirit Band were placed at the center of the South Gallery. For tables farther away, three plasma screens in the atrium broadcast the action.
“We wanted guests to know that there were people out on the dance floor and they wouldn’t be alone if they went out there,” Peachey said. Indeed, Alvin Ailey dancers and guests shimmied to hits like “ Billy Jean” and “Crazy in Love” from 10 p.m., when the gala began, right through the milk chocolate crème brulee dessert course.
About 700 guests—minus a few no-shows due to snow flurries—attended the Southern Company-sponsored gala benefit after an opening night performance in the Kennedy Center opera house that celebrated choreographer Judith Jamison’s 20th anniversary as the company’s artistic director and launched a 20-city U.S. tour.