Something beautiful is coming this way: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Over the decades, this writer has been lucky to have had opportunities to see (or work with) some of the best of American dance – both ballet and modern dance and both in the US and around the world. But seeing Alvin Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations, has always been, well, let’s say it, a revelation. And in September, South Africans will, yet again, have that chance as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater makes its third tour here – September 3-14 in Johannesburg and then September 16-20 in Cape Town.

The company had its beginnings in 1958 with its first performances at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City, under the direction of its founder director and choreographer, Alvin Ailey. When Ailey passed away, Judith Jamison became the company’s second head and Robert Battle became its third artistic director nearly five years ago, in 2011. Now, under his leadership, the company is about to come to South Africa yet again, after a hiatus of nearly 20 years, for performances, workshops, and masterclasses with leading local ensembles such as Moving Into Dance Mophatong. The Daily Maverick spoke with Robert Battle as he and the company were in their final days of rehearsals and other preparations for their trip.

For some, Battle might have seemed to be an unusual choice for this company. This, after all, is a group that had a highly established identity internationally, and a very well known, much loved repertoire. Most importantly, perhaps, its repertoire had come to be very closely associated with Ailey, and then Jamison. In this conversation, it became clear that Battle is fully engaged with the goals of preserving and refreshing that repertoire, as well as expanding the range of works the company performs, in addition to gradually expanding its footprint in the dance world – and the world’s cultural life more generally.

In that Skype conversation, Battle explained how excited he is to be visiting South Africa for the first time, indeed at travelling to anywhere in Africa, for the first time. He said he was pleased this company would be bringing a new work like Polish Pieces, along with other works like Grace, Night Creature (with its great Ellington music), and, of course, that most iconic of the company’s works, Revelations. Speaking about these dances, Battle says: “I love juxtaposing Night Creature and Revelations to show off Ailey’s wicked sense of humour. Then there is the pas de deux from After the Rain, and the work, Exodus. There is the hip-hop element in that (latter) work that has echoes and resonances with such contemporary issues as police brutality. It is both moving, chilling and life affirming. There is also (his own piece) Takademe, a work I choreographed in a tiny apartment in the Queens borough of New York City, a work rooted in music that echoes jazz vocal scatting. We are bringing a lovely variety of work that shows what I am trying to do with the company.”

Photo: Artistic Director Robert Battle. (Photo by Andrew Eccles)

Responding to the question of how he is dealing with the challenge of carrying on the company’s traditions and simultaneously being able to differentiate his tenure from the extraordinary, overwhelming influences of both Ailey and Jamison, Battle explains: “I definitely, personally, have a respect and reverence for what has come before. Even as a student at Juilliard (the renowned music, dance and theatre conservatory in New York City), I loved to look at historic works done in the past – from Ted Shawn and Martha Graham, and then on to Merce Cunningham - and (examining) the residues of what they were doing then and what they were departing from. We have to honour the past, but we must get into the present and the future as well. It is all interconnected. Thus it doesn’t feel jarring, it all has a sense of evolution.” Don’t you don’t feel the weight of the past? “No! No! When I took over the company, Judith Jamison said to me it is not filling (Ailey or her) shoes, but it is the standing on shoulders; it is a comfort, not a weight.”

When asked how he sees himself fitting into the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s history and traditions, Battle explains: “ I never danced with the company, I had no rite of passage dancing Revelations. As a result, some part of me went, whoa! But Judith Jamison chose me, and she said, ‘Alvin would have loved you’. Thereafter, I could make choices that came from my gut.” When Jamison had selected Battle, she said of him: “Combining an intimate knowledge of the Ailey Company with an independent perspective, Robert Battle is without question the creative force of the future.”

Although Battle sounds like a quintessential New Yorker, he is actually from Miami, Florida – and, in fact, specifically from the sometimes rather troubled Liberty City neighbourhood in Miami. Thinking back, he laughs and admits: “Even when went away to college at Juilliard, people shook their heads (mumbling, Miami? Really?). I didn’t go out much in high school, so I had no sense of South Beach (the metrosexual and gay neighbourhood depicted in the film The Birdcage) and all that.” Instead, he adds, “My Miami was North Miami, Liberty City, a smaller community, more Southern and all that. The AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church, the Zionist church world, and all that was part of my orientation.”

Asked about how he is bringing works into the company’s repertoire; how he visualises the repertoire evolving in the future, he replies: “It depends. Choosing a work is something like decorating a room. You choose one piece and then add things that complement it. And (then there is) what I see in the dancers; some cosmic sense of what they are confronting, what is needed, what they have an appetite for ... Or I see two dancers and see that the chemistry is great. Then I have dancers in mind (for a work).”

He goes on to explain: “One of the first works I brought in to the company was a Paul Taylor work – I knew no one would be expecting that. I would do what I was passionate about; a little bit of it and sometimes something I had seen years earlier that had not landed yet and then (I knew) it was the right time.

Asked to explore the impact of his having grown up in Liberty City and whether that experience stays with him through his career as a New York City-based dancer/choreographer/artistic director, Battle offers an emphatic “Yes!” “All of the parts of that, the scary parts, like any poor neighbourhood, the elements of going to church, the Martin Luther King parade, of being connected. The fun – all of those aspects. And some of that gave me my foundation and my reserves when I am feeling a bit doubtful. Before I started dancing, I was singing in church and I had one of those voices that provoked comments like, ‘you talk like a girl’. Then I was studying piano. (With a background like that, in a neighbourhood like that) obviously I was picked on a lot. I was ‘weird’. But I had a friend, James, who was bigger than anyone else. When I told James people were picking on me, he dealt with them for me.” But, he adds that James’s father had a high ranking in karate and so he trained the two boys in martial arts. Even though he never actually had to use this training, Battle offers, afterwards: “Maybe I just walked differently. Then I started to study dance, I saw a performance of Revelations and then dance took over.”

Asked what his goals for this trip are, beyond the obvious ones of performing the company’s glorious works for new audiences, Battle explains: “I know that through our community activities and classes beyond the stage, I am hoping we can inspire people, young, old, but especially the young ... But I also want my dancers to take away a notion of what Africa means in a conceptual, spiritual way of their returning home. It should be a liberating and inspiring experience for them as well. So much of our repertoire is inspired by African dance and African art.” Parenthetically, the interviewer encourages Battle to make certain he and his company have the chance to see the efforts of some of South Africa’s best younger choreographers, people like Dada Masilo, Luyanda Sidiya and Gregory Maqoma, given Battle’s interest in seeing how an African sensibility is brought into contemporary dance.

Photo: Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in Alvin Ailey’s Night Creature. (Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Given the company’s very active travel schedule, Battle is asked how he maintains focus on the aesthetics and artistic quality of his work. He explains he has always been a devotee of meditation; even before he actually knew the word or what it meant, back when he was just a child. He used to sit in the cleft of a mango tree in his family’s garden in Liberty City and visualise what he wanted to do, and what he wanted to be, creating a whole world in head. After he moved to New York City for his Juilliard stint, he sought out a quiet spot in Riverside Park where he would picture – in sharp detail – what outcomes he wanted from his work. He pictured what he wanted, from the audience’s arrival and then through the whole event. It is “innate in me”, he says.

Throughout this Skype conversation, Battle’s hands are constantly in motion – a veritable conversation through dance. Battle laughs when he hears that and admits: “One of my Juilliard teachers told me I should dance with my hands.”

Our conversation turns more serious, to the economics of performing arts companies and the question of how his ensemble is faring in the difficult economic climate. Battle says they are fortunate that “we have lots of angels. We have an incredible staff, board members and donors”. He points to a board chairwoman, Joan Weill, who helped raise funds for one of the biggest dance facilities in the city. He adds that foundation support is a very different ballgame than in previous years, but individual donors and the board have kept the company moving ahead. He adds that other key elements of success have been a near-constant touring schedule (over the years they have performed in 71 countries on six continents for an estimated 23-million people), and the Ailey School – their active arts education programme, and an extension programme, Real Dance for Real People, where thousands of people come in after their day jobs and take all manner of classes. The key seems to be a diversity of income streams.

Of course a performing arts company cannot be a static thing. What does he see in five, 10 years’ time? Battle says they want to keep expanding. They want to add more dancers. “We’re looking at expanding our building, growing our education programmes, looking at the potential of hubs in select cities for aspects of the school and extension work. That can build an appetite beyond the next year’s performance (in a particular city). The notion is for continuing to grow the organisation organically.”

And in a return to the more personal, asked when he decided his life would be in dance, Battle explains that as a child he had been extremely bow-legged and had had to wear braces on his legs. “Something in me wanted to get out of those braces, and once I was out, I never stopped.” He adds, that as a child, he had “tried to move like different animals”. “I would say: ‘Look ma, I moved like a snake, or like Superman.’ She taught me (the music) to That’s Entertainment and I would imitate Fred Astaire, I would pretend to be tap dancing. But when I first saw Revelations, I thought ‘I could do this!’ That was in middle school, yes. And so, here I am.” And, together with the entire Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, here he will throughout September. Go see them. DM

Main photo: Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. Photo by Paul Kolnik. 

For more, read:

• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the electronic press kit

JOHANNESBURG: Teatro at Montecasino

September 3 to Sunday, September 13 2015

PROGRAMMING– Subject to Change

Thursday, 9/3 @ 8:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Friday, 9/4 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Saturday, 9/5 @ 2:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Saturday, 9/5 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Sunday, 9/6 @ 1:30pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Sunday, 9/6 @ 6:30pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Wednesday, 9/9 @ 8:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Thursday, 9/10 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Friday, 9/11 @ 8:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Saturday, 9/12 @ 2:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Saturday, 9/12 @ 8:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Sunday, 9/13 @ 1:30pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Sunday, 9/13 @ 6:30pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

CAPE TOWN: Opera House, Artscape

September 16 to Sunday, September 20 2015

PROGRAMMING– Subject to Change

Wednesday, 9/16 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Thursday, 9/17 @ 8:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Friday, 9/18 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Saturday, 9/19 @ 2:00pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Saturday, 9/19 @ 8:00pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations

Sunday, 9/20 @ 1:30pm A: Polish Pieces, Takademe / Grace / Revelations

Sunday, 9/20 @ 6:30pm B: Night Creature, After the Rain Pas de Deux / Exodus / Revelations