‘I believe dance is a manifestation and celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit’ – Robert Battle

We were honoured to welcome a very special guest to the theatre this week ahead of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater‘s anticipated return to Birmingham on Fri 23 – Sat 24 September.

Robert Battle – one of only three individuals to be named Artistic Director of AAADT since its foundation in 1958 – paid a whistle-stop visit to Birmingham Hippodrome on Thursday 15th September where he was met by Chief Executive and Artistic Director Fiona Allan, Ros Robins – Executive Director of Dance Consortium – plus other special guests from resident partners, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Dance XChange as well as other arts and cultural organisations across the city.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, one of the world’s most popular dance companies, will return to Birmingham Hippodrome for the first time in six years to present two exhilarating programmes this September as part of AAADT’s 2016 autumn tour of the UK.

Founded in 1958, the company is recognised by the U.S. Congress as a vital American “Cultural Ambassador to the World.” Under the leadership of Artistic Director Robert Battle, Ailey’s performances celebrate the human spirit through the African-American cultural experience and the American modern dance tradition. In almost six decades, Ailey’s artists have performed for over 25 million people in 71 countries on six continents and continue to wow audiences and critics around the world.

Robert Battle’s journey to the top of the modern dance world began in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Florida. He showed artistic talent early and studied dance at a high school arts magnet program before moving on to Miami’s New World School of the Arts, under the direction of Daniel Lewis and Gerri Houlihan, and finally to the dance program at The Juilliard School, under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy, where he met his mentor, Carolyn Adams. He danced with The Parsons Dance Company from 1994 to 2001, and also set his choreography on that company starting in 1998. Mr. Battle then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its debut in 2002 in Düsseldorf, Germany, as the U.S. representative to the World Dance Alliance’s Global Assembly. Battleworks subsequently performed extensively at venues including The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Speaking at the lunch, Robert Battle said “I still have an image of my face sitting in the audience during my first visit to see Alvin Ailey. We were bussed to see the company in Miami and I had a real sense that everything I had learned as a kid, going to church and something about the poetry of our past, was there through dance – I just opened up. I knew from that moment I wanted to do something like that.”

“As a company, it’s important that we look at the issues of the day in the context of the past and that we see how far we have come but also how far we haven’t come,” he says. “It gives us some idea of where we want to go in the future. I try to make sure that the choices I make as Artistic Director reflect that importance of social justice, of making sure that our voices are heard in whichever way we can.”

You can catch up with Robert Battle’s interview with BBCWM’s Richie Anderson via BBC Iplayer. Images of Robert’s visit to Birmingham can be viewed by clicking on the gallery above.