India

Ahmedabad

Performance as part of Vikram Sarabhai Festival at Natarani Amphitheater (audience of approximately 500), 2 workshops with children in government schools

Vadodara

Performance at C.C. Mehta Hall, M.S. University (audience c. 650); Film Screening of Moving Stories at Playbox Theater, Faculty of Performing Arts, M.S.U.; All-day workshop for dance students at M.S. University; Workshop at Udayan, NGO for disadvantaged girls;

Lucknow

Performance as part of Lucknow International Dance Festival (audience of approximately 150 – low numbers because of anti-American rally on the same day and violent anti-CAA protests a few days earlier)

Hassan

Performance at Hasanaba Kalakshetra (audience of 1,300); Workshop for special children and young adults; Teacher training workshops for advanced dancers and dance teachers with attendees from Hassan, Bengaluru and Kochi; Urban Dance workshop

Hyderabad

Performance at Shilpakala Vedika (audience of 900); Film screening and panel discussion at Prasad Labs; Workshop in contemporary dance for teens and young adults at HY dance studio; Workshop for S.E.L. social and emotional learning children; Workshop for Naandi Foundation – young women; Lecture at University of Hyderabad; Workshop for children at SpringUP Leadership NGO;

Surat

4 workshops at government schools and the Tap-in Dance Studio

Mumbai

Performance at St. Andrew’s Auditorium as part of EVAM 2020 Festival (audience of approximately 500); Film Screening and Q/A – Sumeet Nagdev Dance Academy; Film Screenings – American School of Bombay; Lecture/Discussion – “Deconstructing Choreography” at Natanam Studio

Pune

Keynote Address – SymBIZ Entrepreneurship Summit, “Entrepreneurship in the Arts” Kochi – Film Screening & Discussion – Lokadharmi Theater Centre; Film Screening & Discussion – College of the Sacred Heart

CITY-BY-CITY PROGRAM SUMMARIES

Mumbai

The India tour opened with a performance at St. Andrew’s Auditorium in Bandra on January 11th before a packed audience of approximately 700. U.S. Consul General Edgard Kagan, ICCR Regional Director M.K. Malik and Jonathan Hollander addressed the audience at the top of the show, after which four works were presented, two contemporary pieces from the Battery repertoire (a commissioned work by South African choreographer Theo Ndindwa, a recipient of the prestigious Mandela Fellowship, and the other by Battery Dance senior dancer Sean Scantlebury;) a classical Bharatanatyam solo by Unnath Hassan Rathnaraju, and SHAKTI, A Return to the Source performed by the entire company. ICCR provided an emcee and the U.S. Consulate produced handsome placards with headshots and biographies of each of the 8 members of the Company that were displayed on easels in the lobby of the theater. Niloufer Sagar, COO of the Terence Lewis Dance Company, and Radhika Jhaveri, a marketing executive related to Hollander’s AFS Exchange family, provided local support by putting a hold on the hall, liaising with ICCR re the ticketing process and manning a table at the lobby of the theater in order to check in those guests invited by Battery Dance, Asia Society and Terence Lewis, who has a huge following on social media. Radhika handled communications with the local dance schools and NGO’s that serve street children, arranging for 8 workshops that the Company conducted during its time in Mumbai. Battery Dance Board Member Laura Entwistle enabled Battery Dance to run two workshops at a government facility for girls rescued from sex trafficking, following on the earlier experience she had facilitated in Delhi and Badlapur in 2014 through her NGO, EmancipAction. Hollander was invited to represent arts and culture in a panel discussion at the Essar House as part of the ‘Avid Learning’ programs with American Consulate’s David Moo moderating and Manjeet Kripalani, Bharat Joshi and Royston Braganza as fellow panelists.

Pune

A public performance at the Yashwantrao Chavan Auditorium was presented to an audience of approximately 600, hosted by Pune’s leading Bharatanatyam dancers Sucheta Chapekar and her daughter Arundhati Patwardhan as the opening event of the 30th Anniversary Season of their Kalavardhini Trust. One day earlier, the Company had presented a 2-hour lecture-demonstration and Q/A session at a new dance center under the auspices of well-known choreographer Shama Bhate and her Kathak institute, NADROOP. While four of the Company’s dancers returned to Mumbai to teach workshops, Hollander and Sean Scantlebury stayed behind in Pune. Scantlebury conducted a two-day advanced contemporary dance workshop for senior dance students at the Lalit Kala Kendra, the performing arts division of Pune University. Assistant Professor of Lalit Kala Kendra and well-known Bharatanatyam performer and choreographer Parimal Phadke interviewed Hollander on stage at Lalit Kala Kendra in a 90-minute talk on Hollander’s career as a dancer, choreographer and arts manager. A talk focused on the infrastructure and support for the arts in America was given by Hollander at FLAME University for students of business and arts; and an interactive session was held at Kathak dance guru Prerana Deshpande’s institute Nrityadham with members of her dance company and Hollander, who had presented Deshpande in Battery Dance’s summer festival in New York many years earlier.

Bangaluru

Over the past 17 years since Battery Dance’s last performance in Bengaluru, the metro has become a nexus for dance activity with many dance schools teaching classical Indian forms and others concentrating on contemporary dance. Battery Dance’s performance in Bengaluru was highly anticipated as were its workshops and master classes at three important dance centers. The Company’s performance was presented at the centrally located Guru Nanak Bhavan and was attended by leading dancers, choreographers, dance writers and governmental officials and a general audience of over 700. Earlier in the day, The Oberoi Bengaluru hosted a press meet for the Company with representatives of 5 of the leading local print media as well as Ashish Mohan Khokar, one of India’s most highly respected dance scholars. Battery Dance’s teaching artists conducted three contemporary dance master classes for students who had never experienced American contemporary dance before at Mithun Shyam’s Vaishnavi Natyashala Institute of Bharatanatyam and Nirupama & Rajendra’s Abhinava Kathak Dance Institution. Two workshops were offered to the contemporary dance students at Attakalari. Jonathan Hollander delivered a lecture on arts management using Battery Dance as a case study for undergraduate business administration and arts students at REVA University; and spoke to the dancers at each of the workshops before the practical training began.

Kolkata

Battery Dance returned to Kolkata for the first time since 2001 with a performance at the city’s prestigious Kala Mandir Auditorium. Over a thousand spectators attended the performance that was introduced by U.S. Consul General Craig Hall, ICCR Regional Director Mr. Venugopal, and Jonathan Hollander. Three workshops were conducted in for the students and company members of two important dance companies -- the acclaimed Tanusree Shankar Dance Company and Sudarshan Chakravorty’s Sapphire Dance Company, yielding invitations to return in both cases. Jonathan Hollander lectured at the Bickram Ghosh Academy of Performing Arts for a combined program organized by Arkadev Bhattacharya and his Niharika Centre for Performing Arts; followed by a creative movement workshop led by Clement Mensah. Interviews were set up by the U.S. Consulate with the Times of India and other leading media outlets, yielding lavish coverage before and after the Company’s stay in Kolkata. Among all of the workshops which Hollander supervised, he also made time to meet with contemporary dancer/choreographer and entrepreneur Vikram Iyengar and to visit the Pickle Factory, a recommissioned cinema hall that is being converted into a performance venue for dance, theater and visual arts.

New Delhi

The final performance of Battery’s tour took place at Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Juster, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs Jeffrey Sexton, Sangeet Natak Akademi Chairperson Shekhar Sen, ICCR President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, ICCR Director General Ambassador Riva Ganguly Das and the Hindustani classical music maestros Rajan and Sajan Mishra in the front row. Despite some injuries and illnesses, the Company managed to pull out a flawless performance that won the appreciation of the diplomats as well as leading dance artists Geeta Chandran, Rama and Dakshina Vaidyanathan, Rajesh and Rakesh Sai Babu, and dean of Indian dance scholarship and criticism Dr. Sunil Kothari. Many of these dance icons had attended a talk and video showing by Jonathan Hollander hosted at The Atelier in Lado Sarai as part of the Desmania Foundation program of arts talks the day before the performance. Workshops for Heemanshu Sharma’s That’s Dance group and Sohaila Kapur’s theater workshop brought Battery teaching artists in contact with 40 high level freelance dancers and actors in Delhi and resulted in invitations for continued affiliations in both cases.

Lucknow

While the Company was on tour, Jonathan Hollander was named a recipient of the inaugural Arjun Mishra Award, and arrangements were made for him to travel to Lucknow to deliver a speech and receive the award. The award commemorated the Kathak dancer and guru, Arjun Mishra, who had headed the Lucknow Kathak Kendra since 1998 and whose American tour Jonathan had organized in 1995. Arjun’s son and daughter, Anuj and Kantika, are now two of the leading young Kathak dancers in India and continue operating the school that Arjun built with the help of Anuj’s wife Neha. They currently inculcate hundreds of students in Lucknow. Anuj arranged a press conference and performance at a theater in Lucknow where his students performed and where Hollander delivered an address and was presented with the award with various television and print media interviews.

Matinee performance for Mumbai street children at Nehru Centre, October 7

Battery Dance returned to India after a gap of five years, presenting a matinee for homeless children at the 800-seat Nehru Centre. The matinee was coordinated by Bunty Chand and her staff of the Asia Society India Centre, who obtained all the necessary permits and reached out to three charitable organizations whose clientele is the homeless community of Mumbai: Akanksha, Pratham and C.C.D.T. Performing for this ebullient audience was one of the highlights of the tour.

Evening performance for the general public at Nehru Centre, October 7

The same evening, BDC gave a performance for the public, sponsored by Citibank, Taj Group and Asia Society. The house was full with a very enthusiastic crowd, drawn by BDC’s reputation in India, enhanced by a full page feature in Time Out Magazine. Members of the professional dance, film, music and theater communities from as far away as Pune attended the performance and accorded the dancers a standing ovation. Considering the very difficult technical conditions encountered at Nehru Centre, BDC’s tour technical director David Bengali did an extraordinary job.

Performance for the general public at Kamani Auditorium, October 15:

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations coordinated with Battery Dance Company in hosting a performance for the general public at New Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium. BDC had performed on the same stage in ‘94, ‘97 and ‘01. The event was compromised by a miscommunication with ICCR, which sent out over 4,000 invitations and announced the curtain time as 6:30 pm. BDC had earlier established 7 pm with its sponsors – who had been promised blocs of tickets as a sponsorship benefit. Some of the guests of Taj Hotel, Citibank and Boeing were unable to find seats as a result of the hall’s being packed, every seat filled and hundreds of standees, by the time they arrived. The media coverage gracefully avoided mention of the chaos in the auditorium, focusing instead on the company’s dancing and the repertoire which received high praise.

2001 India Tour Overview

How does a big international tour come together? Often, there is one person or one institution proffering one invitation that evolves into something much bigger. What it takes to build the tour from these exciting but modest beginnings depends on so many factors. Most dance companies are not in the category of fame and fortune such that offers routinely come in from international sponsors that include financially viable arrangements. More often, companies have to meet their international hosts half-way, by agreeing to cheap (camping?) accommodations, travel subsidies, corporate or foundation grants and individual donations (often from the artistic director’s pocket.) Before entering into one of these jig-saw puzzle arrangements, it is critical to assess the rationales for the tour and determine whether there are compelling reasons to go ahead. Clearly look at the possibility that a whopping deficit will greet you upon your return home.
Taking Battery Dance Company’s 2001 India Tour as a case study, several rationales came together, promoting the concept of building yet another national tour of India:

1) Artistic/program
Jonathan Hollander created a piece in 1998 called “Layapriya” which provided him with the opportunity to grapple with the complexity of Indian rhythmic structures while staying true to his Western roots. The score for “Layapriya” (Sanskrit for ‘one who loves rhythm’) – had been composed by Eero Hämeenniemi on commission by the Helsinki Philharmonic. The 30 minute work drew on the forces of the full orchestra with 5 soloists, percussionists from Delhi- and In addition, Karaikudi Mani, one of India’s most celebrated percussionists, and his ensemble from Chennai as soloists in the concerto-type of form, also giving the Indian musicians freedom to improvise as Western musicians do in cadenzas. The score was brilliant and had received a 20 minute ovation at its one and only live performance at the Helsinki Philharmonic Hall – and luckily for BDC, the Finnish radio had recorded it – but because of the difficulty of bringing such disparate forces together, the piece was unlikely ever to be performed again. Response to the work in New York and in cities around the U.S. and Europe had been very strong, particularly among Indo-American audiences and institutions – and word had reached India, rendering interest high.

CHRISTINE CORREA and FRANK CARLBERG – Another strong link with India and a compelling reason for Indian presenters to latch on to Battery Dance Company was our collaboration with the Finnish composer/pianist Frank Carlberg and his wife, the Mumbai-born Goanese jazz vocalist, Christine Correa. Christine had not toured India extensively since having made a name for herself in the U.S. Mother Goose was Battery Dance Company's latest collaboration with Frank and Christine – Frank had composed the score for the company in 2000 and it had been well reviewed in the New York Times. Touring India with a live musical ensemble (which also included percussionist Michael Sarin) was a coup given the Indian tradition regarding the inextricable partnership between music and dance. Thus BDC had two items in their repertoire with special appeal to the Indian audience.

2) Personnel

These were the years that the Martha Graham Dance Company was on furlough, with the rights to Graham’s works held up in a legal battle. Battery Dance Company had become a home for some of the terrific Graham dancers – Tadej Brdnik, Ariel Bonilla, Maurizio Nardi, Kevin Predmore, Virginie Mecene and Naiyu Kuo. Coupled with Mariella Rietschel from the Royal Swedish Ballet and Adrianna Thompson, a long-time Battery Dance Company member, and BDC’s long-time production designer Barry Steele, BDC had an all-star cast for the India Tour. With such a team, it was hard for Jonathan to consider cancelling when signs pointed to a financial loss. Whether this was a mistake or whether it was the “cost of doing business” was a moot question at this stage.

3) Cross-cultural Synergies

A few years earlier, Hollander had suggested the formation of an arts council in New York to celebrate and promote the artists and arts of India. The Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) was formed and he became an officer of the Board, with Aroon Shivdasani , his co-founder, as President and Executive Director. Aroon and Jonathan felt it was time to introduce the IAAC to the arts community in India and she agreed to accompany BDC on its tour of the 6 largest cities of India and to co-host town hall meetings with cultural leaders in each. BDC invited a prominent local cultural leader (ie. a university vice-chancellor; the head of a national arts foundation; an actor – head of a public relations firm) as convenors and invested in them the responsibility for assembling a list of 100 representatives of the arts community to attend. The conversations were provocative and productive, each side (U.S./India) sharing its frustrations and challenges. The company hoped that by being an outside catalyst, they might inspire greater cooperation within each city’s arts community as well as demystifying perceptions of the American landscape and breeding trust and on-going communication. In retrospect, the company felt they should have done more to lay the pathway for follow-on activities; though the IAAC has done a credible job of improving the cultural traffic between the two countries over the decade since.

4) Humanitarian Concerns

In January, 2001, the Northwestern Indian State of Gujarat was hit by a devastating earthquake with tremendous loss of life and destroying over 600,000 homes. The tour could easily have been cancelled, coming only 3 months later. But instead, the BDC team agreed that it was important to show solidarity with the Indian people. The Company felt it would show respect and concern for them to carry on – most notably – with their performance in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat.

5) Sponsorships -- the good, the bad and the good

BDC director, Jonathan Hollander had managed, once again, to get major sponsorship's in place that covered one-half of the entire project budget: international and domestic airfare, hotel accommodations and half sponsorship of meals; and media relations support were all donated by Air-India, Indian Airlines, Oberoi Hotels and Ogilvy India respectively. The company also received grants from the Ford Foundation, Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust and several other Indian and American foundations, corporations and individuals that covered payroll, insurance and so forth. There was supposed to have been money coming in from each performance on the tour that would help BDC cover local expenses of the 4 weeks+ tour. Unfortunately, these local sponsorship's evaporated during the course of the tour. There was a meeting at the very glamorous Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai that Jonathan will never forget. Things had gotten so bad that BDC were close to cancelling their performances at the Homi Bhabha Auditorium because of the loss of sponsorship's that were to have covered the theater rental. Unbelievably, a young man, Imam Siddique, a friend of the arts but definitely no wealthy heir, jumped in to help the company. At the town hall meeting with leading cultural figures in Mumbai, Jonathan confided to the actress Lillete Dubey and Imam, while they were on a break, that he was broke and the Company might have to abandon its performances. They were shocked and Imam sprang into action: he called the room to attention and put out a plea for donations – of cash and of “things” including a grand piano (which the late Niranjan Jhaveri, prime mover of the Jazz Yatra Festival in Mumbai, donated.) Gerson Da Cunha, who had graciously agreed to convene the Town Hall Meeting, took over the role of auctioneer – auctioning off a performance by Battery Dance Company – and nearly everyone in the room pledged something. Imam appeared later that day and offered to collect all the funds – which he did over the course of the next 24 hours, presenting Jonathan with a packet that covered the rental of the theater. As a result, the performance was salvaged and BDC were able to continue the tour without other major mishaps.