Robert Battle in the Ailey rehearsal studio, and at age 5, after treatment that straightened his legs. (Eilon Paz; courtesy Robert Battle )
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Anyone who saw Robert Battle as a bowlegged baby never expected he’d walk straight — let alone lead one of the nation’s most beloved dance companies. As the cousin who raised him puts it: “If you’d seen Robert’s legs when he was born, you wouldn’t think there was anything to dance about!”
But talent, drive and the support of family and friends helped lift Battle to where he is now: artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which kicks off its 40th consecutive City Center season Wednesday.
Those who know him say the Juilliard grad’s appointment, announced this summer by Judith Jamison (Ailey’s successor after his 1989 death), seemed destined.
“He reminds us of Alvin a lot,” says Masazumi Chaya, Ailey’s longtime associate artistic director. “There’s something about his humor and warmth. He’s very supportive, and he understands this generation of dancers.”
In Battle’s airy Midtown office, as his dancers rehearse one floor above his head, the boyish 39-year-old speaks about “paying it forward” — giving others the same encouragement that nurtured him. The Post’s great dance critic, Clive Barnes, hailed the young dancer/choreographer in a June 2000 review as “the promising Robert Battle” — and that, Battle says, “meant everything to me.”
He was born in Florida, to a single mother incapable of raising him. When he was 3 weeks old, a great-aunt and great-uncle took him to their home in Miami — and brought him to a hospital to have him fit for leg braces.
“He was like the Man in the Iron Mask!” recalls their daughter Dessie Williams, the cousin Battle considers his mother. “I think that’s why he loved movement so much, because deep down, he can remember being burdened with those metal bracelets.”
Williams played the piano and taught Battle the song “That’s Entertainment!” when he was 6. It was several years after those leg braces came off, and Battle remembers jumping around, “trying to imitate Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Jr.”
But as much as he loved to dance, he felt pulled in another direction. “I think I always was a choreographer,” he says. “I always wanted to manage things. My mother used to say, ‘Robert, your friends are not your subjects!’ because I always had to be the boss.”
His “light-bulb moment” arrived at age 12, when the Ailey company came to Miami and performed its iconic “Revelations.”
“I remember the largeness of it,” he says. “The dancers seemed as tall as cypresses. There they were, right in front of me. It seemed like magic, what they were doing!”
Soon after, Battle was dancing, too — at Miami’s New World School of the Arts. When Juilliard came to town, auditioning hopefuls, he applied, almost as a lark.
“Long story short, I got in,” Battle says. “And then I received the tuition bill and thought, this isn’t gonna happen!”
He told Juilliard as much, and the school offered him a full scholarship. Even so, he wasn’t sure he had enough money to fly to New York and live here. And Dessie Williams’ elderly father wasn’t sure Battle should go:
“This Juilliard,” he asked her, “Is this a recognized place, or some fly-by-night operation?” Assured it was legit, he chipped in, along with, Williams says, “black, white and Spanish” neighbors and teachers. Battle’s father died after his first year at school. That fall, he choreographed his first dance, “Jewel Lost,” in his dad’s memory.
“I thought, maybe I could do this again,” he says. “Maybe there are other dances in me.”
After graduating from Juilliard, Battle joined the Parsons Dance Company before forming his own troupe, Battleworks; in 2005, the Kennedy Center honored him as one of the “Masters of African-American Choreography.”
For his first season, running through Jan. 1 at City Center, he’s chosen an eclectic lineup: some of his own and Ailey’s dances, as well as works by hip-hop’s Rennie Harris, an interactive piece by American-Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin and the classically beautiful “Arden Court” by Paul Taylor, whose work the company has never performed before.
The dancers are as diverse as their programs. “I try to find people who don’t necessarily move the way I do or look the way I look,” says Battle, who shed 70 pounds several years ago and keeps his size 46 jacket in his office closet as a reminder.
“Sometimes it comes down to looking into someone’s eyes,” he continues. “Do you feel that hunger, that need to communicate? That’s what’s going to inspire me.”
He remembers finding the notes Dessie Williams tucked into his suitcase when he set off for New York: “Your talent is what got you there,” one of them read. “Your talent is what will keep you there.”
For now, “there” is wherever the Ailey company is dancing.