Finale Performance of Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp 2025

Thank you for joining us as we celebrate Cal Performances’ ongoing engagement with younger members of the community, reminding one and all of UC Berkeley’s central role as a rich resource for everyone living in the Bay Area. Since late June, we have welcomed the extraordinary participants in the 2025 Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp to campus and today, we eagerly look forward to watching them display their talent. Now at the beginning of their creative lives, they remind us of the continual promise and potential of the performing arts. What a joy it is to have them with us!

At Cal Performances, where arts education is central to our mission, Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp is one of our most important programs. Indeed, since its founding in 2002, the camp has become fundamental to our contributions to life in the surrounding community. Not so much an arts program as it is a life skills program presented through dance, AileyCamp has already had a profound impact on the lives of more than 1,300 Bay Area students and their families.

Of course, there ias no shortage of summer performance and academic youth programs. But it is rare to discover a camp centered on as dominant a cultural force as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Due to the expert leadership of Alvin Ailey, the late Judith Jamison (to whom we dedicate this year’s camp), past artistic directors Robert Battle and Matthew Rushing, and recently appointed artistic director Alicia Graf Mack, the company stands today as one of the most accomplished, respected, and beloved dance institutions in the world. For our AileyCampers to spend such concentrated time in close contact with the legacy, passion, and purpose of these great artists is nothing less than remarkable.

We extend our deepest thanks to the many generous donors and volunteers who help make AileyCamp possible. Their contributions allow us to offer the program to East Bay middle-school students entirely tuition-free. And I also want to single out the fine work of camp director Patricia West, and associate director Vincent Chavez, along with Rica Anderson, Cal Performances’ manager of education and community programs, who have been so busy supporting the current campers this summer.

Most of all, we honor the accomplishments of the campers themselves. Please join me in applauding their efforts—both on this meaningful occasion and over the past six weeks. They have more than fulfilled their commitment to challenge themselves each and every day, and we congratulate them on their achievement.

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AileyCamp is only one of Cal Performances’ varied, educational, and entertaining programs, and as many of you already know, earlier this spring, we announced details of our exciting 2025–26 season. Over the coming academic year, we’ll spotlight fresh perspectives, captivating stories, and brilliant talent in presentations that expand the boundaries of the performing arts and inspire one and all to engage more deeply with the world around us.

I encourage you to visit our website and check out the special interactive season brochure that has been designed to provide the best possible online reading experience; this dynamic online tool has also been configured to map perfectly to your device, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, or mobile. Please take a look today!

And as you explore the calendar, I recommend you pay particular attention to our 2025–26 Illuminations theme of “Exile & Sanctuary,” focusing on how issues of displacement can inform bold new explorations of identity and community; and how artistic expression can offer safe harbor during times of unrest or upheaval—an idea I hope will ring true for each performance you experience this season.

Over the coming months, Cal Performances also welcomes the return of Víkingur Ólafsson as our 2025–26 Artist in Residence. This masterful and ever-insightful pianist appears this fall as soloist in two concerts with London’s extraordinary Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and returns to our stage for a solo recital in the spring.

Of special interest to our AileyCamp audience, our acclaimed dance series this season is distinguished by genre-defining artists and major new productions, including the renowned Paris Opera Ballet in the North American premiere of Red Carpet, a new work by boundary-breaking choreographer Hofesh Shechter; the legendary Martha Graham Dance Company celebrating its centennial; The Joffrey Ballet in an otherworldly celebration of the traditional Scandinavian solstice festival; the long-awaited Cal Performances debut of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; and, of course, the return of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in April 2026.

I look forward to engaging with so many fresh artistic perspectives and hope you’ll join us in witnessing how these experiences can move each of us in the profound and unpredictable ways made possible only by the live performing arts.

Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances