Make Yourself Uncomfortable

Make Yourself Uncomfortable

Important Terminology

Important Terminology

The Truth of the Body

The Truth of the Body

Rangoon, Burma: Creating a stage on a basketball court

Rangoon, Burma: Creating a stage on a basketball court
A dozen workmen, teak wood, rubber cushioning, linoleum flooring can combine to make a professional-quality stage on an outdoor basketball court!

Pre-tour Planning

Pre-tour Planning
Going through the day-to-day with Aviva Geismar and the teaching artists from Drastic Action and Battery Dance Company

Burma - working with FSN's

Burma - working with FSN's
Nyi Nyi was one of the terrific Foreign Service Nationals at US Embassies overseas who have made our projects go. Here he is shepherding us at the airport in Rangoon.

Luggage

Luggage
I recommend Fibrecases -- these were purchased a dozen years ago, and yes, they look like it, but they've held up and they don't attract pilfering because they look so distressed!

380 Broadway, 2003

380 Broadway, 2003
Tomek Wygoda, whom we met through the Silesian Dance Theatre in Poland, came to New York to work on a solo with Jonathan. This piece was ultimately performance in Krakow at the European Conference on Tolerance with live accompaniment by the Cracow Klezmer Band.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2006

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2006
Working with wonderful dancers from the Amrita Performing Arts, we tried out our newly minted Dancing to Connect project. Fred Frumberg and Kang Rithsal (seen in the yellow shirt) trusted us and facilitated our visit. Who knew that the King would return from Paris especially to see the performance??

Opera House, U.B., Mongolia 2008

Opera House, U.B., Mongolia 2008
Carmen and Mayuna outside the opera house. From the outside, the treacherous conditions are not visible (this is the place with the guttered stage floor.)

Waldorf & Waldkirch Schools, Freiburg, Germany, 2008

Waldorf & Waldkirch Schools, Freiburg, Germany, 2008
Carmen is working with visually disabled students in a Dancing to Connect workshop that brought them together with students from a Waldorf School.

Theater Freiburg, Germany, 2008

Theater Freiburg, Germany, 2008
No one could quite believe that students from 3 different schools could merge into a functioning team so fast as these kids did in their Dancing to Connect workshop with Sean and Mayuna

Beijing, 2008

Beijing, 2008
Master Class at the Chinese University of Nationalities, there's nothing like a little bit of humor to warm up the situation (Tadej is probably indicating that the dancers should get their weight forward, or else....)

Mongolia - 2008

Mongolia - 2008
Blazing Saddles? No - just our one day off in Mongolia with Tadej, Bafana, Carmen & Mayuna

380 Broadway - where it all begins and ends

380 Broadway - where it all begins and ends
From L to R: Carmen Nicole, Tadej Brdnik, Bafana Matea, Sean Scantlebury, Jonathan Hollander, Robin Cantrell, Mayuna Shimizu - this was the composition of our team as we prepared for the 2008 Asia Tour. Our new dancer Mira Cook and our production designers Barry Steele, David Bengali and G. Ben Swope are not pictured here.

Lucknow, India - 1997

Lucknow, India - 1997
This is a much more elegant version of the iron that was proffered by the humble gentleman backstage in Lucknow, but you get the idea!

Freiburg, Germany - 2006

Freiburg, Germany - 2006
DtC is hard work but fun too, bridging generations, backgrounds and transcending language barriers.

Nishinomiya, Japan - 2006

Nishinomiya, Japan - 2006
For its performance at Hyogo Performing Arts Center, BDC teamed up with Japanese duo-pianists and a choir, making the performance truly international and guaranteeing a full house

Taipei, Taiwan - 2006

Taipei, Taiwan - 2006
As part of its 2006 tour of Taiwan, which was anchored by a performance at the Taipei Arts Festival, Jonathan lectured to a group of corporate executives on Corporate Social Responsibility as it pertains to support of the arts. Adding an element such as this within an arts tour broadened the company's outreach and helped implant new ideas of corporate volunteerism, the importance of in-kind contributions and other aspects of corporate support utilizing BDC as a model.

Taipei, Taiwan - 2006

Taipei, Taiwan - 2006
Running a choreography workshop for the teaching staff of Cloud Gate Dance School cemented a relationship with Taiwan's leading contemporary dance company, adding content and depth to BDC's program in Taipei. The Company was invited to visit a rehearsal of Lin Hwai Min's new choreography and enjoyed a reunion with Bula Pagarlava and Nai-Yu Kuo, two dancers who had performed with BDC and who had moved up the ladder with Cloud Gate. ,

Freiburg, Germany - Dancing to Connect 2007

Freiburg, Germany - Dancing to Connect 2007
Tapping into the well-springs of students' creativity, we have learned over the past 6 years and across many countries that high school students, boys and girls, can find joy, build teams, open up new channels of communication and expression through dance. Most of these students had never set foot in a modern dance class, and yet their imaginations and explorations were unbounded.

Cleaning Costumes in Ulaanbaatar, 2008

Cleaning Costumes in Ulaanbaatar, 2008
Dealing with sweaty costumes on a long, multi-country tour is a huge challenge. Bringing a case of woolite and lots of plastic hangers is one way to deal with it. But sometimes the weather and conditions (and timing) are such that there is no opportunity to wash and dry before it is time to pack and go. And, if you are foolish enough to have some costumes that require dry cleaning (I am), then the problem is further compounded. And dry cleaning at a 5-star hotel is not advised unless you have a pocket full of cash that you don't mind spending. I was delighted to find a superb dry cleaner in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We couldn't understand how there could be enough business in this very poor country to sustain such a thriving operation, but we certainly kept them busy for a day or so!

New York City - Downtown Dance Festival, August, 2006

New York City - Downtown Dance Festival, August, 2006
International Cultural Engagement is not a one-way endeavor. The fact that BDC produces New York City's longest-running outdoor dance festival gives us a wonderful public platform for presenting dance from around the world. Ocean of Light was the brainchild of Sanjay Doddamani, bringing together dancers from New Orleans with those from South Asia, in a cross-cultural production that recognized the anniversary of Katrina and the Asian Tsunami.

Poznan, Poland; Malta Festival, 2002

Poznan, Poland; Malta Festival, 2002
Just as friends lead one to other friends, and a network builds, international cultural engagement often thrives on individual partnerships, relationships, mutual respect. Such is the case with Battery Dance Company and Silesian Dance Theater of Poland. Jonathan met Jacek Luminski, Artistic Director of SDT in 2004, introduced by a mutual friend, Fulbright Senior Scholar and theater professor Juliusz Tyszka of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. The fruits of these relationships includes performances by SDT in New York, hosted by BDC; performances by BDC in Poland, hosted by SDT and the Malta Festival in Poznan which was launched by students of Juliusz', and on and on.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Glorious Downtown Dance Festival Launch

New York City can boast of some great weather (when it's not too cold, too wet, or too hot!) Well, our Karma must be excellent because yesterday and today, the two opening days of the 27th Annual Downtown Dance Festival, were two of the most spectacular days of the year.

A few thousand visitors took the refreshing ride across the Harbor from Lower Manhattan on the Governors Island Ferry. After a short stroll to Colonel's Row, they were treated to four hours of dance on a stage each day, perfectly situated on a grassy mall lined with London Plane Trees in full foliage.

Saturday's striking images included a bevvy of women in a rainbow of long-skirts knotted to each other in Samar Haddad King's Skirt Dance; another skirted community huddling and sashaying together in Melanie Cortier's Sookie Jumps; 4 couples in evening gowns and tuxedo shirts swinging to Dean Martin in Lydia Johnson's Dream Sequence; dancers intertwining to breathy singing and guitar-strumming by Maya Solovey in Lane Gifford's Touch; Rainey Welch's cut-off crew of hip-ster women in Shedd Your Skin; Stefanie Nelson's pairing of a tortured man and a grounded woman in Out of Wonderland; Margo Sappington's delightful miniature Bossacucanova for three young ballerinas trained by Valentina Koslova; Battery Dance Company's own spiritual quartet Where There's Smoke to Poulenc; the earthy gyrations of Vissi Dance Theater which led to the grand finale with nearly 50 audience members learning to jive and jack to house music guided by the masterful Courtney Ffrench.

Today's (Sunday) marathon of twelve companies began with fluid dancers in scarves performing Isadora Duncan's lucious choreography staged by Catherine Gallant (with a second dose of Duncan served up later by Laura Iris Nave) and ended with a singer and guitar-accompanied strutting of a striking couple of Flamenco dancers (Ricky Santiago and Laura Montes) from Carlota Santana's Flamenco Vivo. In between, there was a the stunning courtship duet of Natalia Johnson and Leyland Simmons choreographed by Corey Baker; Yung-Li Chen's tutu-clad modern dancers with helium balloons and a shopping cart; grooving funky gals in Karen Arceneaux' Departure; the legendary Sachiyo Ito in a Kabuki lullaby and her trio of dancers in kimonos with willow branches and cherry blossoms; twitching clients in Karen Gale's Waiting Room; Dance China NY with their dancers whose seamless gymnastic moves set by Jiang Qi to Bach rivalled their countrymen in the Beijing Olympics; Amy Marshall's Unharvested with a cast of nine in sculptured partnering and fluid formations; Naomi Goldberg Haas' senior citizens in touching duets with young concert dancers ; dance as vivid, fantastical story-telling by Tsuyoshi Kaseda.

Tomorrow and Tuesday, we open our series of five performances at Chase Plaza with a festival-within-a-festival: ten companies representing the different shades of Indian dance. Come and join the enchantment!
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