Robert Battle, the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, sitting in his office at the company’s headquarters recently, pointed to a photo on the wall.

It was a composite image, made 10 years ago, of three faces. At left was Alvin Ailey, who formed his namesake troupe in 1958 and built it into an institution of enormous cultural pride and unparalleled popularity. In the center was Judith Jamison, the company star who succeeded Ailey at the helm after his death in 1989 and led the organization into financial stability. And on the right was Battle, who was never a member of the company but had just taken over as its director.

“Wow, OK, a little pressure,” Battle said, understating how he felt back then.

“I wanted the job but I had doubts,” he continued. “I had this fear that the audience wouldn’t show up, that people would say ‘The era is over.’ But people are still showing up.”

This, too, was an understatement. Even during a pandemic that kept the Ailey company offstage for more than a year, it is financially stable and artistically thriving. On Wednesday, it returns to New York City Center for its annual December season. A week or two shorter than usual (through Dec. 19), the run will be — apart from a few excerpts at the BAAND Together Dance Festival in August — the company’s first series of live performances since March 2020. 

That’s plenty to celebrate, but the company will also commemorate Battle’s 10 years in charge with a program devoted solely to his choreography (Dec. 7, 11 and 17). Such a focus on his dances is rare. When he took over as director, Battle was an independent choreographer with his own company, raising the possibility that his works would come to dominate the Ailey repertory. That didn’t happen.

But Battle, 49, has transformed that repertory nevertheless. While maintaining Ailey classics and the near-ubiquity of Ailey’s signature masterpiece, “Revelations,” he has brought in works by unexpected choreographers like Paul Taylor, Ohad Naharin and Wayne McGregor. He has commissioned pieces by Kyle Abraham, the hip-hop master Rennie Harris and Ronald K. Brown, who many Ailey watchers had hoped would succeed Jamison. In 2019, he chose Jamar Roberts, a dancer in the company, as its first resident choreographer, discovering and nurturing one of today’s most acclaimed voices.



With Battle’s encouragement, these and other artists have taken risks both stylistic and thematic — addressing gun violence, the impact of the prison system on Black families, lynchings, massacres. There have been a few duds and misfires, but the standard critical complaint of the Jamison years — that the new repertory didn’t do justice to the always exceptional Ailey dancers — is now seldom heard.