Bermuda
Hamilton, Bermuda
Hamilton, BermudaBDC director Jonathan Hollander and his wife Noelle taught masterclasses at The Jackson School and Festival for the Advancement of the Performing Arts, in Bermuda.
At the Festival for the Advancement for Performing Arts, Battery Dance Company held choreographic workshops that allowed local students to create their own choreography. The trip was a turning point for Battery Dance Company as it 'opened up some new ideas about what is valid in dance'.
One of the festival organizers said that 'because of the Hollanders, Bermuda now has more informed dancers.'
Venues
Bermuda Dance Theatre
Services Modern dance master classes taught by Noelle Braynard and Jonathan Hollander.
Jackson school of performing arts for advancement in the arts
Social Issues we found the ethnically mixed Bermudian dance culture to be extremely refreshing and open to whatever new information and training could come their way.
Cultural Adaptation For such a small island, Bermuda has a very vibrant dance culture and good facilities (studios with wooden floors, etc.)
Bureaucracy Even on this very small-scale project, we encountered some schisms based on personalities that control the various arts structures that control the arts in Bermuda. This isn’t entirely unexpected in such a small place where just a few people are responsible for the decision making vis a vis resources, attention and so forth.
Take-aways Don’t completely tune out when on vacation! Our engagement in Bermuda emanated from a few phone calls that I made while on a rare vacation with my wife. I scoured the yellow pages in the hotel phone book to see if there were any listings for dance in Bermuda. I made some calls after a hard day of relaxing on the beach (!) and lo and behold, we were back on the island less than a year later, teaching dance classes and enjoying the beautiful atmosphere. This was our very first international program and even though we were neophytes, we learned quickly that reciprocity is an important quality in international cultural engagement. Hence, we invited the Bermuda National Dance Company to perform in lower Manhattan the following year!