Battery Dance committed itself to a multi-year cultural diplomacy engagement in Cape Town, SA, which culminated in the creation of the Cape Town International Dance Festival. In the grand scheme of things, the Company succeeded in shepherding the first truly international dance festival to be held in South Africa, organized in partnership with iKapa Dance Theatre; performed on 5 separate occasions in three locations – the Artscape Opera House, the Artscape Plaza and an outdoor stage in the center of Gugulethu Township; and ran 20-hour Dancing to Connect youth engagement workshops in Hout Bay in collaboration with Lalela Project and in Gugulethu in collaboration with iKapa Dance Theatre. Representing incalculable added value, Battery Dance’s production and lighting designer, Barry Steele, served as the production director for the entire Festival; and its artistic director, Jonathan Hollander, consulted continuously with the iKapa leadership and advocated and supported the participation of dance companies from Finland and Spain in the Festival.

Audiences for the Opera House performances were generally mixed in terms of age, gender and ethnicity and dancers vs. general public. An informal cumulative audience tally for the Opera House performances is estimated (by BDC) at over 2,000. Audiences for the Artscape Plaza performances were underwhelming with a range of a disappointing 25 – 100 people per day. Similarly, the performances at Gugulethu attracted around 300 people; not the thousands that were anticipated. Whether the low numbers for the outdoor performances reflected a lack of publicity, a factor of first- time event, a miscalculation of foot traffic at Artscape Plaza and timing problems on an early Sunday afternoon in Gugulethu, would be hard to evaluate. Perhaps it was a combination of all of the above. Audience response to the performances was very good – with loud cheering at the end of almost every performance.

One of the most positive aspects of the Festival was the inclusion of local dance companies that responded to the opportunity offered by iKapa and Artscape. In a very divisive, competitive environment, the fact that Cape Dance Company, Adele Blank/Free Flight Dance and the Cape Ballet Company participated in performances organized by iKapa, was striking and carried an important lesson of community spirit.

Another positive outcome came in the form of the two Dancing to Connect workshops that allowed approximately 35 youth from the Townships to engage in the art of choreography, learning about themselves and their own capacities, building teamwork skills, engaging with American teaching artists, and performing with great pride on the stage at Artscape Plaza. Although even this aspect of the project fell far short of expectation -- five workshops, not two, had been planned because iKapa failed to take the necessary steps to realize this expectation. Nonetheless the young women and men who took part were exhilarated by the experience; a fact evidenced by Lalela’s enthusiasm for continuing the program with Battery Dance in the future. The Lalela/Hout Bay workshop was fully subscribed and adhered to best practices, with students appearing dressed and ready at the appointed time every day and with full-on energy and desire to participate. The Gugulethu workshop organized by iKapa was the opposite: students appeared as much as 1 to 2 hours late every day, the teens who were of the ‘right’ age to participate in a DtC workshop dropped out abruptly, without explanation, and the younger children, ages 10 – 14, who came of their own volition, were the only ones who actually finished the project and performed at Artscape. A third workshop that was to have happened in Mitchell’s Plain, looked semi-promising on the first day, with very enthusiastic adult leaders from the community, but fizzled on the second day with the loss of the rehearsal venue. The 4th and 5th workshops, promised by iKapa, failed to materialize altogether.