Civil Rights Museum CEO Jill Savitt to host panel with Alvin Ailey’s Robert Battle

Robert Battle, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, will participate in a panel discussion at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights on Thursday, January 12, in advance of the company’s Fox Theatre engagement February 16-19.

This is the seventh annual event the company has organized with the museum to bring attention to social-justice issues expressed in many of the ensemble’s works. (No events were held in 2021 and 2022 because of the pandemic.)

Joining Battle for “The Time is Now: Truth, Transformation and Triumphs” conversation will be Jill Savitt, president and CEO of the National Center; Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a scholar, activist and historian on the faculty of Morehouse College; and Nasha Thomas, national director of AileyCamp. AileyCamp is a six-week summer intensive for young people. The Atlanta iteration will take place this year June 5 through July 14.

The panel conversation will focus on the global movement toward Black freedom, beginning with the March on Washington, D.C., in 1963, recognizing triumphs in the years since then. NBC News correspondent Blayne Alexander will moderate.

Participants will also discuss Alvin Ailey’s Survivors. Choreographed in 1986, Survivors is about the harrowing experiences and courage of Winnie and Nelson Mandela; it premiered 20 years into Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and four years before he was released. The score is by jazz drummer Max Roach. Jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln adds her wordless vocalizing.

A new production of Survivors premiered in New York in December 2022 and will be performed in Atlanta on opening night. In his New York Times review, dance critic Brian Siebert wrote: “ . . . dissonant strings strike in slashes, and the dancers react as if hit by billy clubs . . . as Roach’s drums rage, Lincoln screams. This is powerful stuff . . .”

Doors open at 6 p.m. Panel begins at 6:30 p.m. The event is free but seating is limited and registration required by January 9.