Robert Battle talks to Viv Hardwick about taking charge of America’s biggest modern dance company as Alvin Ailey visits Newcastle.

THE top US contemporary dance company, Alvin Ailey, returns to Newcastle Theatre Royal celebrating 50 years of touring but about to see just its third artistic director taking charge since 1958.

Robert Battle, 37, succeeds Judith Jamison in July, after her 22 years followed the founder’s death in 1989. Battle is to become responsible for the New York company’s $26m budget, the largest building dedicated to dance in America, 32 professional dancers, 13,000 people involved in dance and ticket sales which generate 70 per cent of Alvin Ailey’s funding.

“I think a big part of (taking the job) is what the company has meant to me and to African- Americans and been such a beacon and source of inspiration,” says Battle, who has been a freelance choreographer with Alvin Ailey since 1999.

“I always think this job is a kind of calling and the fact that they chose me speaks volumes.

For me, there was no other choice. I had to say yes,” adds The Julliard and New World School graduate who pays tribute in turn to support from associate director Masazumi Chaya and Matthew Rushing, the new rehearsal director.

What has concerned him most is how he can take charge of the administration involved in touring to places like Newcastle while making new dance that carries the expectations put upon the traditions of Alvin Ailey.

“I love to choreograph and to teach and talk about dance and, occasionally, I’m good at it. I think, for me, what has been interesting is that (this job) all spoke to the things that had meaning for me. I don’t feel I’d be completely fulfilled if making dance was all I did. Fundraising for me is more about people wanting access to what it is that we do and demystifying the process so that people feel they are taking something home with them.

“My mother was an English teacher and is one of the great teachers who have inspired me throughout my life. It is also a source of comfort that I will be keeping the traditions aloft.

I have always said I have an old soul because I was raised by my great-uncle who was in his 80s when I was in my diapers. But dance, unlike a museum piece, has to be seen live. You don’t ask for the Mona Lisa to be taken down because it’s been seen so many times,” Battle says.

He modestly misses out his own composition, In/Side (2008), when I ask him about the programme for Tyneside. Battle praises Suite Otis (1973) by George Faison which features a battle of the sexes set against Otis Redding’s witty songs. Dancing Spirit (2009) is a recent tribute to Judith Jamison by choreographer Ronald K Brown and Revelations (1960) by Alvin Ailey is one of the most viewed pieces of modern dance in history.

Battle based In/Side on Nina Simon’s song Wild is the Wind because he feels her voice shows everything that is right and wrong with the world.

“This particular song is so profound and I’d listened to it for years wanting to make a dance to it and I finally decided to do so. I used Samuel Roberts, who was in my other company, Battleworks, and the reason I called it In/Side was the way the dance starts with the dancer having his back to the audience. Then he’s creeping inside from the edge of the stage but then the dance was so personal and like exposing your gut that I had the double meaning of a person going inside themselves. It’s one of my most personal dances,” he explains.

The biggest challenge Battle admits he faces is creating his first piece of dance for Alvin Ailey as artistic director.

“That pressure, which is outside pressure of ‘what is his first ballet going to be?’, is there but I’m used to it a little. I haven’t got a piece of dance in mind, but I’m constantly choreographing in some fashion and I generally don’t have anything mapped out until I get closer to an actual event. What happens is I find a great piece of music and then it doesn’t take me very long.

“As a teacher you often say all these encouraging things to students and now you have to practise what you preach. ‘Trust yourself, trust your talent’ are often seen as cliches, but they’ve worked for the Alvin Ailey company as they will work for me.”

“It you’re interested in something edgy and new, that’s part of our repertoire and if you want to see something that is tried and true and still relevant and inspiring… that’s part of this company’s success as well.

“The good thing is that I will now be seeing these dancers as my dancers.”

■ Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, Newcastle Theatre Royal, tonight, 7.30pm. Tickets: £14- £31. Box office: 08448-112-121 theatreroyal.co.uk