The Board of Trustees of Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation announced last Thursday that Robert Battle, artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since 2011, has informed them that he needs to focus on his health and has submitted his resignation.
The board said it has accepted Battle’s resignation “with regret,” stating that Battle will remain available to the Board through Dec. 31, 2023.
“Robert Battle has served the Ailey organization with talent, verve and distinction over the past dozen years,” said Daria Wallach, chair of the Ailey Board of Trustees. “The board, the company, the staff, and the dance world recognize and applaud the contributions he has made to expanding the repertoire, fostering the work of choreographers, supporting Ailey’s wide-ranging education activities, and serving as an ambassador for dance. We offer him our warmest gratitude.”
Battle said, “The personal and professional bonds I’ve forged at Ailey working with the company’s exceptional dancers and so many other great artists will always mean the world to me, but I know this is the right moment for me to move on and focus on my health.
“I look back on these past 12 years with warmth and gratitude,” he added.
The foundation said Associate Artistic Director Matthew Rushing, supported by Ailey’s artistic team, will take responsibility for leading the company in its upcoming holiday engagement at New York City Center.
“Ailey now enters a period of transition, as the Board begins the search to identify a new artistic director,” the statement said. “The organization does so from a position of strength, as Ailey kicks off an exciting 65th anniversary season.”
About Robert Battle
Robert Battle became artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July 2011 after being personally selected by Judith Jamison, making him only the third person to head the company since it was founded in 1958.
Battle has a long-standing association with the Ailey organization. A frequent choreographer and artist in residence at Ailey since 1999, the Foundation said he has set many of his works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, and at The Ailey School.
The company’s current repertory includes his ballets Ella, For Four, In/Side, Love Stories finale, Mass, and Unfold.
In addition to expanding the Ailey repertory with works by artists as diverse as Kyle Abraham, Aszure Barton, Mauro Bigonzetti, Ronald K. Brown, Camille A. Brown, Rennie Harris, Paul Taylor, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the Foundation said Battle has also instituted Ailey’s New Directions Choreography Lab to help develop the next generation of choreographers.
The Foundation said 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,” the Foundation said.
It said Battle danced with Parsons Dance from 1994 to 2001, and also set his choreography on that company starting in 1998.
Battle then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its debut in 2002 in Düsseldorf, Germany, as the US representative to the World Dance Alliance’s Global Assembly.
The Foundation said Battleworks subsequently performed extensively at venues including The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
Battle was honored as one of the “Masters of African American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, and he received the prestigious Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA in 2007, the Foundation said.
