One of the city's best-known dance companies is looking for a new leader.

The Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation's executive director, Sharon Gersten Luckman, has announced she's leaving the company at the end of next year to pursue other endeavors, including working with other arts non-profit groups.

The Long Beach native has worked at the company for two decades and has held the post of executive director for 16 years.

Under her watch, the Ailey organization opened the largest facility in the Northeast devoted exclusively to dance, The Joan Weill Center for Dance, in 2005.

Last year, she oversaw Robert Battle taking over after the company's longtime artistic director Judith Jamison retired.

"Much like the Ailey dancers’ extraordinary performances onstage, Sharon Luckman has been performing amazingly behind the scenes,” Battle said in a statement. “She can execute three dozen managerial moves at once, all based on her own organizational choreography, and never lose her sense of absolute poise. I can’t thank her enough for what she’s built for our audiences and community, and for what she’s enabled me to do artistically.”

The search for Luckman's replacement is ongoing.