Ghana meets Battery Dance Company

BDC Teaching Artists Robin Cantrell and Sean Scantlebury touched down in Accra yesterday and from Ellen Irvine, Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Ghana, we received this report: Their flight arrived on time this morning.  We went directly to their hotel, dropped them to rest, then back at 2:00 p.m. to go to the University, where the faculty and members of the Ghana Dance Ensemble and senior students (40-or so) were assembled to meet them.  Following introductions, there was a high-energy welcome performance (Sean and Robin were pulled in at the end and did well despite fatigue from not having slept during the flight).  Following that, we moved to the Department Head’s office to meet the Director of the School of Performing Arts and to review the program plan with faculty members.   Robin and Sean were back at the hotel by 4:30.   Everyone very satisfied and happy and ready to begin tomorrow morning.
Stay tuned for more!  

DTC Sneak Preview!

Washington Irving and Gramercy Arts High School students performed two stunning pieces on Friday, January 29, the culmination of their week-long Dancing to Connect workshop, generously sponsored by Con Edison.  They'll be performing their work for fellow students and members of the community on three separate occasions this month.  Tues.  Feb 9th  -Spring Semester Celebration at 1:00pm   and 1:55pm;  Thurs. Feb 25th (Black History Month Celebration)  1:00pm and 1:55pm and  Friday, Feb 26th  (Gramercy Arts Dance Concert)  6:00pm.  All of the performances take place in the Washington Irving HS auditorium, Irving Place between 16th & 17th Streets (enter through the left-most red door in front of the building).  Identify yourself with Battery Dance Company.  Admission is free!

Happy New Year from Battery Dance!

Dancing to Connect performance by students from Millennium High School (NYC) and Ernst-Reuter-Oberschule (Berlin) at the Winter Garden in lower Manhattan, October, 2009

Photo by Barbara Tennstedt

Upcoming Events

Battery Dance Company is honored to perform on Thursday, December 3, at the fabled Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for Business Council for International Understanding's 25th Annual Gala. Special tributes have been created by the Company and Frank Carlberg Quintet to honor the Dwight D. Eisenhower Global Award recipients Roger Agnelli, President & CEO of Vale S.A. and Charles E. Phillips, Jr., President of Oracle Corporation.

A Wonderful Postlude to the Dancing to Connect 2009 Program

Upon their return from New York City, the Dancing to Connect students from Ernst-Reuter-Oberschule were invited to perform for Ambassador Murphy and a group of returnees from Embassy-sponsored visits to the U.S. This experience undoubtedly added an indelible memory for all.

Response to Dancing to Connect from Essen

The dancing project is for (our students) a great experience which gives them energy and helps developing their self-esteem. The close, family-like bonds in the dance group during the training, the ability to express their experiences, their personal strength, wishes, hopes, moments of their personal history through the dancing, the efforts and strain because of the dancing, the encouragement through the coach, the work for a common joint performance, are not limited to this one project: This period of time and these experiences together with the performance in front of parents, teachers, brothers and sisters, friends and foreign people will be encouragement for their further development, they will give motivation and stimulation like a “lighthouse” does, to find their own way with more strength and self-esteem.

With greetings from everybody from “Stoppenberg” and again many thanks for this great project

I remain yours sincerely,

Reiner Düchting (Headmaster, Hauptschule am Stoppenberg, Essen, Germany)

Dancing to Connect Phase III

Apologies to all you BDC blog-followers. The rigors of the past week left no time for posting. So here's a quick review: 20 students from the Ernst-Reuter-Oberschule in Berlin arrived on October 21st and met up with their host families from Millennium High School. They fanned out across the Boroughs, but luckily, no one got lost and everyone showed up bright and early the next morning to meet Carmen for a tour around the Financial District and a round-trip on the Staten Island Ferry (the weather cooperated -- it was a gorgeous day!) In the afternoon, all 60 students involved with the program, Germans and Americans, were invited to the German Consulate to view a documentary on the Berlin Wall and to have lunch in the 13th floor dining room over-looking the U.N. and East River. On Friday, they began the sequence of 6-hour workshops over five days (yep, both weekend days were included!) in three teams of mixed German and American students. The photos give you a taste of the results: Smashing! The Winter Garden was nearly full to bursting for the 1 pm matinee show. The evening show was also well attended, with audience boosted by invited guests who joined German Consul General Horst Freitag in a lovely pre-theater reception at The Grill Room. Thursday was a day of hugs and tears as the Berlin group departed New York. Next dance steps for them will be a performance for Ambassador Murphy and a group of German Alumni from various State Department-sponsored exchange programs on November 16 at the US Embassy in Berlin! The dance goes on.... and on .... and on!
And now we'd like to call attention to the long list of partners and friends who made this possible! Huge thanks to The German Consulate in New York, Consul General Horst Freitag, Cultural Attache Thietmar Bachmann, Nina Midori Krull, Werner-Ciprian Fugel & Elke Huber; Rob Fenstermacher, Roxana Pleacoff, Anika Rigole & CDS International; Christian Haenel, Anne-Kathrin Fix & Robert Bosch Stiftung; Ricarda Lindner, Tim Rosenkranz & German National Tourist Board; Debra Simon, Karen Kitchen, Elysa Marden & Brookfield Properties' Arts>World Financial Center. An especially huge thanks to the incredibly hard-working Colin McEvoy of Millennium High School supported throughout by Principal Rob Rhodes, Jenny Krumpus, Alison Angrisani and the many students and families that danced, hosted and welcomed their counterparts from Berlin. We acknowledge the leadership and support of Barbara Tennstedt who organized the Berlin aspect of the project and Sigrid Nawroth and Jutta Laube, the teachers who chaperoned the students from the Ernst-Reuter-Oberschule, all of whom deserved to be named but space doesn't allow it. Behind the scenes and supporting us throughout were Steve Sokol of the American Council on Germany and Hans-Jakob Wilhelm, a member of Battery Dance Company's Ambassadors, as well as fellow Ambassadors Erik Patton and Allison Strouse and Chair Emeritus Zachary Snow. Mike Riggs did a yeoman's job of technical direction and lighting for the performances at the Winter Garden, and Allen, Tim and the other members of the tech crew also deserve our thanks.