Ailey Highlights includes excerpts from five classics works (Blues Suite, The Lark Ascending, Hidden Rites, Isba, Escapades) choreographed by Alvin Ailey.

Quintet is in its way a small masterwork and one that differed significantly from other Ailey signature works before it. Like Reflections in D, the piece was an imaginative and sensitive reading of its score, and it offered yet more proof of Alvin's distinctive gift for blending serious choreography and themes with affectionate teasing of his characters. In the new piece, however, Alvin explored for the first time the private being behind a highly public face, a subject he would return to repeatedly."
- Jennifer Dunning, Alvin Ailey: A Life In Dance

Using African-American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues--this suite fervently explores the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.