They made the journey as part of JUNTOS, a dance collective founded in 2006 by one of their own—rising senior Joanna Poz-Molesky from Berkeley, Calif.

“It’s important that artists work together, in their own communities and in others,” she said.

JUNTOS included participants from the Julliard School and SUNY Purchase. In all, 13 dancers took part in the experience.

“I wanted to bring these schools together because they’re three of the best dance schools in New York,” Poz-Molesky said. “I wanted them to have this shared experience, so that it might inspire them to work together and to open their eyes to what else dance can offer.”

The trip included three days of study with Mexican choreographer Jaime Camarena as well as public performances and workshops at a retirement community and an orphanage. The collective made stops in Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Queretaro.

The dancers in JUNTOS, which means “together” in Spanish, collaborated on fundraising, designing and creating costumes, choreographing six original pieces and advertising the performances.

The meeting with Camarena was made possible through the assistance of Ailey/Fordham alumna Katherine Horrigan, (FCLC’02), Poz-Molesky said.

The collective included Ailey/Fordham dancers Kate Chamberlain, the group’s New York coordinator; Kile Hotchkiss, Helen Hatch, Ninia Agustin, Marisa Martinm and Adam Salberg, the group’s photographer and webmaster.

Hatch said she was grateful for the entire experience.

“I have learned so much about other cultures, people, places, personalities and ideas,” she said. “It has been a huge learning experience, for which I will be forever grateful.”

Poz-Molesky said the JUNTOS trip was inspired by a similar immersion experience she organized in 2005 for En Pointe Youth Dance Company, a troupe she founded while still in high school.

“A year and a half ago, for spring break, I took a friend to Mexico. That was the first time I’d gone there in three years, and people there asked me if I would dance again,” she said.

Poz-Molesky said she would like to continue excursions with JUNTOS, particularly to Guatemala, where she has family and where she hopes to visit next March.

“People might ask why, when they need so many other things there, that we would go to dance,” she said. “But I think art can offer community. With community, comes love from other people, and that’s how people live.”

Ana Marie Forsythe, administrator of the program, noted that the average graduating class is traditionally 20 students, but the percentage of those who land contracts right after graduation averages only 65 to 70 percent.

“It was a small class, but they made up for it in talent,” she said.

The class of 2009 is also distinct for the variety of jobs its members have embraced. They include contracts with the Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago, the Brooklyn-based Ronald K. Brown Evidence Dance Company and a touring production of The Lion King.

“It is a very eclectic group of companies and venues,” Forsythe said. “Some dancers are doing Broadway-type work. Some dancers are doing Ailey II, of course, and some are doing companies that we’ve never before had dancers asked to join.”

Forsythe credited the success rate to the talent of the dancers, coupled with the program’s artistic and technical training, and intense networking with choreographers around the country.

That certainly was the case for Sarah Daley, who worked as an apprentice with Ailey II while attending Fordham. Ailey II is a junior company made up of the Ailey School’s most-gifted graduates.

With three others from her graduating class, she was offered contracts with the company this fall. Daley said the apprenticeship was particularly helpful in preparing her for life after college.

“I learned how to rehearse with an actual company, because it’s a little different from rehearsing in a school setting,” she said. “It was great to be around a company environment, learning the ins and outs of what they do on tour.”

Landing the job was important for Daley, who hails from South Elgin, Ill. because it enables her to stay in New York City, where there are more dance opportunities.

“It’s pretty cool that in Ailey II next year, there will be four from the graduating class,” she said. “It’s exciting for us, because our class was very close and we like to work together.”

Samar Haddad King, founder of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and a 2006 Ailey/Fordham graduate, recruited one of the class of 2009, Sara Genoves-Sylvan, to dance for the company she founded not long after graduating with a concentration in choreography.

Haddad King said it was natural to gravitate toward dancers from her alma mater since there’s an inherent familiarity that makes it easier to work with them. It is also important for a young dance company to recruit performers who are willing to help out with all aspects of a production, from writing proposals to helping with music and theatrical elements of shows.

“They’re all so well rounded and brilliant, and I do think they were drawn to the Ailey/Fordham program because they weren’t in a bubble and in one form of art.”

The students will take part in the world premiere of Prologue for Five Songs by choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi, former principal artist with the Martha Graham Dance Company and director of Ailey’s Graham-based modern dance department. Other works to be performed include Pigs and Fishes by Elisa Monte, Tomorrow by Doug Varone and Exodus by Ronald K. Brown.

Since 1998, the world-famous Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, in partnership with Fordham, has offered an innovative, highly competitive bachelor of fine arts degree in dance, rooted in an exceptional liberal arts education in the Jesuit tradition.

Students study at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus and at the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation’s Joan Weill Center for Dance in Manhattan. The four-year, 153-credit degree enables students to develop into highly versatile dancers and well-educated adults, and offers New York City venues for performances.

Students in the senior class have apprenticed under Ronald K. Brown, Complexions, Pascal Rioult, and Urban Bushwomen. Ticket information is available on the Fordhamalumni website.

When The Ailey School—the official school of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater—made its first-ever appearance at the Holland Dance Festival in The Hague on Nov. 14 and 15, the 13-member troupe included 12 Fordham University students.

Eleven of the students—Jacqueline Burnett, Taeler Cyrus, Fana Fraser, Daniel Harder, Demetia Hopkins, Ethan Kirschbaum, Jennifer Locke, Levi Marsman, Amy McClendon, Jordan McHenry and Lilli-Ann Tai—are enrolled in the four-year Ailey/Fordham Bachelor of Fine Arts program.

They performed with Ailey fellowship students Lindsey Holmes, a Fordham junior studying literature, and Christopher Bordenave in a joint program with the Rotterdam Dance Academy. The program featured Eroica, choreographed by Francesca Harper, and First Exposure by Darrell Moltrie. The Festival, which ran from Oct. 30 through Nov. 18, offered workshops and dance performances from many of the world’s best dance companies and schools.

The Ailey/Fordham BFA program, inaugurated in 1997, is a fully accredited four-year degree program in which students take a broad curriculum of dance techniques while enrolled full time in non-dance academic courses at Fordham. At the completion of the program, The Ailey School and Fordham present their students in a fully produced performance in The Ailey Citigroup Theater.

Ailey Artistic Director Robert Battle has initiated New Directions Choreography Lab (NDCL) to help emerging choreographers develop new work. The program enlists highly trained Ailey students to work with them on the process as a purely creative experience, free from any type of restrictive expectation.

Recently, three Fordham students were given the opportunity to help up-and-coming choreographer Camille Brown actualize a dance-in-progress that she said was partly inspired by depictions of African Americans in a Subway sandwich commercial.

Fordham College at Lincoln Center sophomores Patrick Coker, Rachel Secrest and Jacquelin Harris were part of an ensemble that performed the three-part piece last semester at the Joan Weill Center for Dance on West 55th Street.

The student dancers collaborated with Brown on interpreting her vision of the history of African-American humor, its bald stereotyping and its use of caricature in minstrel shows and other venues.

Students were taught the choreography, which merged stereotypical movement, clichéd vocal riffs and vigorous modern dance steps, over a period of five weeks. During that time, they were encouraged to bring their own artistic expression to their dance, they said.

Secrest, a double major in dance and political science, said that the piece changed considerably from where it started. She valued the opportunity that NDCL had given her to go deeper into dance performance: Working with a choreographer on an emerging piece, she said, took her well “beyond technique.”

“It was really interesting to interpret, and hard,” Secrest said. “It was different from the normal Ailey training because this was a chance for us to build on our own artistry, which is important if you are working toward being a professional dancer.”

Sophomore Jacquelin Harris said that the topic made her think about how movement related to the creation of character.

“There is a symbolism behind each step,” she said. “[It] caused me to be more than just a dancer, but also an actor.”

Brown expressed her appreciation of NDCL’s collaborative aspect.

“This gave me the opportunity to work intensively to figure out what I am doing with the new piece,” she said. “It was amazing to have a creative playground.”

NDCL plans to support two new emerging choreographers every semester, offering Ailey-Fordham students a chance to stage cutting-edge choreography while earning their degrees. Students must try out at the beginning of each term for the choreographic labs. Those chosen are given credit for their participation.