Born in Jacksonville, Robert Battle moved to Miami's Liberty City as a young boy to live with relatives. His young mother unable to care for him, raised by his loving relatives, Battle grew up surrounded by the arts and church.
Dance comes to mind, especially this week, as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicked off this year's 20-city North American tour in Washington, D.C. And the man who led off the event, who literally stepped on stage first, was none other than Matthew Rushing.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continues to globally expand its diverse brand of breathtaking performances under the strategic artistic direction of Robert Battle. Battle was raised here in Liberty City, Miami.
The famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is on tour, and they will be stopping at the Fox Theatre next week for an extended stay. From Feb. 10 to 14, the company will perform a collection of pieces and end each show with "Revelations," a celebrated piece by Alvin Ailey.
"It's pretty clear that there's a love affair between audiences and 'Revelations'," choreographer Alvin Ailey wrote in his autobiography, speaking of the work that would become the signature of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He was not overstating the case.
The rise of the Nazis meant the demise of Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, whose jazz-inspired, avant-garde classical compositions were blacklisted as the work of a Jew. Under German occupation in Prague starting in 1939, Schulhoff desperately tried to escape to the United States, then to the Soviet Union, but he was arrested in 1941 and died the next year at the Wulzburg concentration camp in Bavaria.
"Art is universal; art connects people." Those sentiments may seem trite -- maybe even cliche to the point of losing meaning. But sometimes a notion or phrase becomes trite because it is true.
Roxanne Vargas and Robert Battle, Artistic Director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, discuss the new season and Battle's new book.
