Battery
Dance
Company
Can a dance company be as
socially relevant
With everything that it does, Battery Dance Company answers these
questions in the absolute affirmative. As a performing arts group known for
its “simply gorgeous*”, “entrancing*” productions and “supple, technically
perfect dancers*” and an organization committed to social progress at home
and abroad, Battery Dance Company fully lives up to the definition of a
dynamic cultural institution with a global sensibility.
Can
choreography
have a
conscience?
as it is
artistically excellent?
Since its founding in 1976, Battery Dance Company has brought more than 100 dance pieces to life;
performed extensively in 40 countries; mentored more than 200,000 public school students through its
Dancing to Connect™ program; hosted the Downtown Dance Festival for 30 consecutive years; provided
subsidized rehearsal space for 500 non profit dance and theater groups through its Studio Share Program;
commissioned two dozen original scores; and welcomed numerous international choreographers, scholars
and interns to its lower Manhattan studio.
Staying relevant for three and a half decades has meant listening
and responding to the needs of the local and global communities
it serves. The importance of fostering an engaged audience for
dance has been an urgent and consistent message and is a
theme at the heart of each Battery Dance Company project.
By bringing free classes, lectures, and performances to
cities and towns worldwide Battery Dance Company
reaches across geographic and linguistic borders to
relate the vocabulary of dance to the language of
everyday life in a way that stimulates and sustains
a global appreciation for contemporary dance.
* El Watan, Algeria; Outlook, India; Badische Zeitung, Germany
Photos - left to right: Chin Lai & Jacob Pritchard
when we
connect
Battery Dance Company’s steadfast commitment
to the accessibility of the arts often requires it to
challenge the assumptions that accompany
traditional dance performances. Some of the
company’s most treasured productions have
occurred without tickets and without walls.
While Battery Dance Company invites audiences to
experience world-class dance at its home in lower
Manhattan, the troupe also brings the music and
movement of its work into the natural gathering
places of communities—schools, parks, office
buildings, museums, and studios—for aficionados
and first-time dance audiences alike to enjoy.
This spirit is embodied in the Dancing to Connect
program, an award-winning initiative that engages
international youth in creativity and team building
through the American art form of modern dance.
Born from Battery Dance Company’s Arts-inEducation initiatives in New York City public
schools, which have served over 200,000 students of all ethnic backgrounds since its start over
thirty years ago, Dancing to Connect lets students
experience the full arc of the creative process, from
the first spark of an idea to the final curtain call.
Students work with Battery Dance Company
teaching artists in intensive choreographic
workshops that culminate in student performances
of works they themselves have created.
For many, interacting with Battery Dance
Company provides the first exposure to
professional artists. The grins that spread across
the faces of children experiencing the thrill of a live
dance performance for the very first time compel
Battery Dance Company to return year after year.
Print & design: courtesy of Moody’s Corporation
Photos - top to bottom: Christian Jungeblodt, Richard Termine, Nicholas Papp, Ina Debald
when we
leap
Battery Dance Company has toured five
continents, bringing its works to Algeria, Australia,
Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Bulgaria,
Burma, Cambodia, China,
Democratic Republic of
Congo, Denmark, Estonia,
Finland, Germany, Ghana,
Hungary, India, Israel, Japan,
Jordan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia,
Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia,
Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tunisia,
Turkey, Uganda and Vietnam.
Before each trip begins, Battery Dance Company
partners with host countries to design a schedule
that reinforces the company’s dedication to
making its art widely accessible and using dance
to foster intercultural understanding. Between
performances—often staged in small cities and
towns for which a visit from an international arts
group is a rarity—Battery Dance Company engages
community members of all ages in a dialogue
about dance. From hip-hop workshops with girls in
headscarves in Amman to choreographic workshops
with Klezmer musicians in Krakow, the company
works to encourage an atmosphere in which ideas
can be freely shared and collectively explored.
Discovering similarities and respecting differences
are cornerstones of the Battery Dance Company
international mission.
From one trip to the next, a fundamental lesson is
reconfirmed: inspiration travels both ways. Just as
the company emboldens young dancers in Kuala
Lumpur to experiment with unfamiliar styles, the
company returns home enriched and influenced
by many new friendships and fresh ways of seeing.
Photo: Jacob Pritchard
when we
assemble
Collaboration is the hallmark of Battery Dance
Company’s creative process. When developing a
new work, the company draws on the virtuosity and
vision of its dancers, resident composers, musicians
and designers to generate the final production.
Under the direction of Jonathan Hollander, the
company’s President and Artistic Director, the
expertise of the entire Battery Dance Company
family is fused into a single, powerful expression.
This practice gives voice to a chorus of cultures.
Dancers in the company bring with them influences
from the countries of their formal dance training,
including Barbados, France, India, Italy, Japan,
Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden
and Taiwan. The narratives of each composition
are realized through the unification of these diverse
Photo: Jacob Pritchard
languages into a single, vibrant dialect. Works that
reference the historical and cross-disciplinary
nature of dance are another of the traits that
distinguish Battery Dance Company choreography.
Poetry, painting, even Arabic calligraphy are equally
likely to inform the company’s choreography.
The company is also well known for bringing its
dancers together with newly commissioned scores,
breathing visual and physical life into the notes for
the first time.
The ultimate fusion occurs the moment the
dancers and musicians face their audience. The
rich influences that have led to the creation of each
work are as numerous as the varied backgrounds
of the thousands of individuals who experience a
Battery Dance Company performance each year.
when we
share
The cultural landscape in New York City changes
continuously, perhaps nowhere more acutely than
in Lower Manhattan. Staying relevant for thirty-five
years has required Battery Dance Company to be
as dynamic as its surroundings.
In 1982, Battery Dance Company created the
Downtown Dance Festival, which has since become
New York City’s longest-running public dance
festival. The Festival revels in the panoply of dance
that New York City offers and features a diversity
of dance styles with a local and international roster
of performers.
After moving to its current home on Broadway
in 1984, Battery Dance Company created the
Studio Share Program, providing subsidized
rehearsal space for nonprofit dance and theater
companies. The Studio Share program serves
hundreds of dance companies each year, playing
an urgent role in preserving the creative nexus
that characterizes New York City.
Through major funding from the Robert Sterling
Clark Foundation, Battery Dance Company has
launched the first-ever Cultural Diplomacy Toolkit, a free online resource that shares with the arts
and diplomatic communities the lessons learned
from the Company’s international projects in
40 countries.
An active member of Lower Manhattan Arts
League, Battery Dance Company partners with
acclaimed downtown-based arts organizations
to share ideas, information and resources and to
devise new ways of ensuring the vitality and
accessibility of the arts in lower Manhattan.
Photos - top to bottom: Richard Termine, Jacob Pritchard, Richard Termine
Jonathan Hollander, founder and artistic director of
Hollander has facilitated American tours by dance
Battery Dance Company, is one of the outstanding
companies from many countries and is Co-Founder
choreographers of his generation and a leader in
and Board Member of the Indo-American Arts
international cultural exchange
Council in New York. Hollander
and social activism through dance.
established Battery Dance Company’s
His work in 40 countries has been
Downtown Dance Festival in 1981
supported by the U.S. Department
and continues to serve as its artistic
of State Cultural Envoy, Speakdirector. Hollander received the Silver
ers and Performing Arts Initiative
Mask of the Silesian Dance Theatre
Programs; Fulbright Senior Scholar
(Poland), the USable Award (Germany)
and Fulbright Specialist Programs,
and Arts & Business Council’s Encore
Ford Foundation, Trust for Mutual
Award. Under Hollander’s leadership,
Understanding, Governments of
Battery Dance Company actively
Germany, Finland, India and others.
supports the commissioning of new
He has choreographed over 75 works
musical scores and the inclusion
that have been presented in major
of live musical performance in its
theaters and festivals throughout the JONATHAN HOLLANDER productions. Hollander has lectured
President & Artistic Director
U.S., Europe, Africa, the Middle East,
on Arts Management and Arts
Asia and Australia. Hollander has
Education in countries as diverse as
established Battery Dance Company’s arts
Mongolia, Poland and Taiwan. He has been a guest
education residencies in universities, colleges and
speaker for the Aspen Institute, India Foundation
conservatories and at the primary, middle and
for the Arts and keynote speaker for the 2011
high school levels in New York City public schools.
Asia-Pacific International Dance Conference.
Battery Dance Company has distinguished itself for nearly
four decades through
»» Creating dances that have astonished
audiences in 40 countries around
the world
»» Teaching Dancing to Connect workshops
on four continents, turning thousands of
young people into dance-makers
»» Bringing arts education to New York City
public schools in all five boroughs
»» Presenting the Downtown Dance
Festival, New York City’s longest-running
dance festival
»» Sharing expertise in the field of
international cultural engagement
through the first-ever online Cultural
Diplomacy Toolkit
»» Providing low cost rehearsal space to
hundreds of groups each year through
its Studio Share Program
»» Partnering with Lower Manhattan Arts
League, 11 arts organizations that share
ideas, information & resources to ensure
the vitality of downtown’s cultural life
Battery
Dance
Company
380 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10013-3518
Tel: 212.219.3910 | Fax: 212.219-3911 | www.batterydance.org
Photos - cover: Darial Sneed; top: Richard Termine
Design: Sylviane Grant