Three days before choreographer Camille A. Brown presents her electrifying dance-theater work Mr. TOL E. RAncE at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival in New York City, she and seven members of her company, plus composer-pianist Scott Patterson, gather around a laptop computer in a studio at the City Center before a rehearsal. Amid hearty laughter,…

From playing the painter Basquiat to Martin Luther King Jr. in Boycott to a lawyer in Syriana, plus roles as Secretary of State Colin Powell in W. and Muddy Waters in Cadillac Records — not to mention the demanding title role in John Guare’s play A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theater —…

Jenifer Lewis turns up everywhere. After launching her career in the Broadway play Eubie, the Missouri-born dynamo turned her attention to TV, winning roles in A Different World, Murphy Brown, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Strong Medicine, among other top shows. Meanwhile, she added big-screen credits, like Sister Act, What’s Love Got to Do…

LONDON — With Africa’s economy recovering, new, wealthy potential art patrons are looking around for great deals in the field. Nowhere do they seem more plentiful than in this exciting city. Home to the British Museum, which possesses one of the world’s finest and most extensive collection of African art, it also boasts art dealers…

It would be hard to name a more popular summer festival than DanceAfrica. Held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) every May for 34 years, it offers topflight dance, music, films, dance classes, children’s activities and a super-popular outdoor bazaar, drawing thousands of people, not only from New York City but from all over…

Most people think of Haiti as devastatingly poor, unremittingly corrupt and profoundly wounded by a gruesome colonial past and hideously brutal governments. With the earthquake in 2010, it seemed to slip even further into a nightmare world. When the Drum Is Beating (Tanbou Frape), which had its premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in New York…

Updated April 4, 2012: Elizabeth Catlett died Monday, April 2, at the age of 96. In 2011 Valerie Gladstone profiled the celebrated artist while her art was getting stateside attention at the Bronx Museum and at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. Artist Elizabeth Catlett works almost every day in her sunny studio…

On a recent blustery afternoon, the wind sweeping across the empty lots along Third Avenue in Brooklyn, N.Y., the artist Glenn Ligon swings wide the door of his spacious studio in an old factory, welcoming a conversation about his upcoming show. An elegant man of 51, dressed in crisp, blue shirt, black jacket and slacks,…

Judith Jamison has an awful lot of which to be proud. Under her leadership, begun in 1989 after the death of choreographer Alvin Ailey, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has become one of the most popular and distinguished dance companies in the world. It has performed for more than 23 million people in 48…

Crowds heading to the City Center for Judith Jamison’s farewell program packed 55th Street in New York City Sunday night. While the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater draws a huge audience every December for its monthlong engagement, this occasion attracted twice as many fans as usual. “I wouldn’t have missed it,” one woman said to…