Princess Grace Statue Award, 2007

Princess Grace Award
Dance Scholarship, 1993

Robert Battle became Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July 2011 at the personal selection of Judith Jamison, making him only the third person to head the Company since it was founded in 1958. Mr. Battle has a long-standing association with the Ailey organization. A frequent choreographer and artist-in-residence at Ailey since 1999, he has had numerous works performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and students of The Ailey School. The Company’s current repertory includes his ballets The Hunt, In/Side, and Love Stories (a collaboration with Ms. Jamison and Rennie Harris). Mr. 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. Upon his graduation from Juilliard, Mr. Battle joined the Parsons Dance Company and danced with them from 1994 to 2001, and he also set his own choreography on that company starting in 1998. Mr. Battle then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its premiere 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. He has also created new works and restaged his ballets for such companies as Hubbard Street Repertory Ensemble, River North Chicago Dance Company, Koresh Dance Company, Introdans, PARADIGM, and Ballet Memphis. He has regularly conducted residencies at universities throughout the United States and gives master classes around the globe. Mr. 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. In July 2010, he was a guest speaker at the United Nations Leaders Programme in Turin, Italy.