Poland

Two of Battery Dance’s senior teaching artists, Sean Scantlebury and Mira Cook, participated in the Dancing Poznan 2015 Festival. They taught an array of master classes and workshops reaching approximately 80 students from all over Poland. They performed in two concerts, both mixed bills with the host company Polski Teatr Tanca. They also completed a Dancing to Connect workshop with twenty participants who created and performed an original work of choreography on the final evening of the festival. By all accounts, their participation was a major success for PTT and for Battery Dance, coming just a week after PTT had performed and taught in the Battery Dance Festival in New York City (the Polish company’s New York debut.) This symmetrical exchange was a vibrant example of bilateral international engagement between Polish and American artists, companies, audiences and students.

Mira taught two daily ballet classes to mixed age and level, 20 – 25 students in each class of 90-minutes each. A live accompanist was provided which enhanced the quality of the classes immeasurably (in New York, the practice of having live accompanists for dance classes has waned in recent years, due to the economy and the challenging state of support for the arts.) She felt the students were very diligent and lovely personalities despite their lack of prior training.

Sean taught a contemporary dance class each morning with 20 students; and coached the Dancing to Connect workshops every afternoon with another cohort of 20 students. He was very impressed with the commitment and motivation of the participants and commented that the audience for the DtC performance was astonished to find out that the students themselves had created the choreography over the course of only 6 days of training.

Battery Dance Company returned to Poland in June, 2004, with a team of 8 people: 6 dancers, artistic director and technical director. The Tour constituted Battery’s 6th visit to Poland since 1996. The raison d’être behind Battery’s 2004 tour was two-fold: to participate in the New New Yorkers Festival in Warsaw and the Malta Festival in Poznan; and to present “Secrets of the Paving Stones” and “Between Heaven & Earth”, two works that had been created over the previous months to music by the Craców Klezmer Band, for Polish audiences.

When we arrived in Warsaw, we loaded into the Studio Theater, that occupies a quadrant of the massive Soviet-era Palace of Culture. On previous tours of Poland, I had looked at this pile that dominates central Warsaw from the safe distance of the Maly Theater, a lovely and intimate haven of drama and dance across the street. This time we are the featured performance on the inaugural evening of the New New Yorkers Festival presented by the U.S. Embassy, and have a second evening as well.

We were pictured in Polish Newsweek, adjacent to an article on Daniel Libeskind, who was also a part of the Festival! In the end, full houses and repeated curtain calls feel awfully good!

Our dancers restored themselves on two mornings with a ballet class given by Warsaw’s prima ballerina and international ballet competition judge Ewa Głowacka, who came to our performance on the second night with her husband, a conductor. They rushed backstage afterwards and hugged and kissed all of us and thanked us for our performance. What an honor!!

Mention must be made at this point of Pawel Pniewski, who currently serves as technical director for one of Warsaw’s most prominent theaters. Pawel had accompanied us on our previous Polish tours, in 2000 and 2002, serving as co-technical director, interpreter and guide. Busily engaged with his own projects this summer, he nevertheless found time to find lighting equipment to equip our theaters as well as intervening with intractable directors, and finding Ewa to teach us!

Likewise, Multi-Communications President Malgorzata Bekier and her daughter Judyta welcomed us in Warsaw, helped interpret in the theater, and soothed our ruffled feathers afterwards. The person-to-person aspect of their friendship, loyalty and generosity helped us regain our balance.

Battery Dance Company returned to Poland in June, 2004, with a team of 8 people: 6 dancers, artistic director and technical director. The Tour constituted Battery’s 6th visit to Poland since 1996. The raison d’être behind Battery’s 2004 tour was two-fold: to participate in the New New Yorkers Festival in Warsaw and the Malta Festival in Poznan; and to present “Secrets of the Paving Stones” and “Between Heaven & Earth”, two works that had been created over the previous months to music by the Craców Klezmer Band, for Polish audiences.

Our first performance at the 14th International Malta Festival took place on a special covered stage erected for us in the courtyard of the Zamek (castle). Cold weather was a hardship for the dancers, only somewhat offset by electric heaters in the changing tents on either side of the stage. However, they danced magnificently and were rewarded with a sensational response from the audience.

The next day thunder clouds blew in during the afternoon and there was torrential rain and lightning. Huddled in an arcade amongst the old central market square buildings in the old town, we thought….”not again!!!” We were determined to go on, but the temperature was also dropping fast (I think it must have been about 50 F by curtain time, with blustery winds and intermittent rain). A conference was held and our dancers, affected by the sight of the large and intrepid audience waiting patiently in the courtyard (without covering), decided to perform “Notebooks” and two solos (Sean's and Stevan's.) The extended applause from the drenched audience assured us that our efforts were appreciated.

I wish to express the entire Company’s appreciation to Izabella Szarek for her expert, sensitive and effective handling of our tour of Poland. We shall all miss Andy Koss and appreciate his vision and support. Magda Wacisz, Renata Czerw and Jolanta Kepinska were all involved in helping us in the preliminaries and on the ground for the tour in various respects, and we are deeply grateful to all of them.

Over a 10-day period in the Fall of 2003, three members of Battery Dance Company visited Poland, supported by a grant from the U.S. Embassy. They led dance workshops for freelance and professional dancers in Warsaw at the Volt Studio before going to Kraków where they taught, rehearsed and performed in residence at the Culture House of the Kasimierz District. While in Kraków, they also taught classes for the general public at Aqua Park Dance Center.

Their creative energies were focused on the genesis of a new production “Secrets of the Paving Stones”, a collaboration with the Craców Klezmer Band, and Polish dancers Tomasz Wygoda and Beata Owczarek. The first 8 minutes of this 30 minute production were created on site in Krakow. When the work was completed later that fall in New York, it became a featured part of the Company’s New York Season at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, toured the Middle East and East Asia (on other State Department-sponsored tours) and was part of the Company’s opening night performance at the New New Yorkers Festival in June, 2004, in Warsaw, and at the Malta Festival in Poznan that same year.

Two performances (both with overflow audiences) were given by the Battery Dance artists, along with the Craców Klezmer Band, and dancers Tomasz Wygoda and Anna Krysiak, at the Scena Tanca Wspolczenesnego. The first was a special performance for the participants of the European Conference on Tolerance, who had been addressed earlier in the day by Jonathan Hollander on the topic of “The Role of Culture in Promoting Tolerance”; the second was a public performance of the same program.

At the end of their stay, Ms. Ernst-Alper and Mr. Scantlebury returned to New York, while Jonathan Hollander traveled to Budapest at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy, Hungary.

Slupsk had been the site of Battery’s first Polish performance in 1996, and we harbored fond memories of the standing ovation and rhythmic applause that had greeted a performance only 20 hours after our arrival at Teatr Impresaryjny.

Joanna Kubacka, the Deputy Director of the Teatr Impresaryjny, is a powerhouse organizer and very creative and ambitious in her programming. She took care of all arrangements for our stay in Slupsk, had our meals preordered at a very good restaurant near the theater and arranged for our accommodations in rooms recently renovated in a building adjacent to the theater itself.

The stage in Slupsk was a little small (in width) for our production, but we managed to shoe-horn the choreography into the space. As for the audience, it was overflowing the theater and gave us as enthusiastic response as we had enjoyed in 1996. This time, the press coverage was extensive and rapturous (there had been no press follow-up in the previous engagement.)

When Battery Dance Company traveled to Warsaw as part of their Poland tour in 2000. After a performance disaster in Warsaw that had happened several years prior- BDC decided to take all the necessarily precautions on this trip.

BDC had arranged to give two performances at the Teatr Maly, our Warsaw host in 1996 -- a ticketed show for the general public, and the a free concert for children. Six weeks prior to the tour, the Teatr Maly received a directive to close on the weekend that we were engaged to perform. (The Corpus Christi religious holiday and the end of the school year coincided and many people were given leave at this time.) Also, the Maly was faced with a 40% rent hike and the future of the theater was in jeopardy. The Maly’s Director, was able to broker an arrangement with the Teatr na Woli to produce Battery’s shows instead. Subsequently, BDC was unable to find anyone to take charge of inviting youth centers and orphanages to participate in the children’s show – so that plan was cancelled. (Elzbieta Grygiel of the Stefan Batory Foundation had originally offered to help – but in actuality, was “too busy”.) Upon arriving at the theater, 3 days prior to the performance, we discovered that there was no BDC signage in the display cases outside the theater and that only two tickets had been sold. We had already learned that the Boris Eifman St. Petersburg Ballet and the Warsaw Jazz Festival would be playing back to back with us, and to make matters worse, many citizens of Warsaw had taken advantage of the holiday on Thursday to take a long weekend. The Theater Manager and Public Relations Director of the Teatr na Woli met with us a few hours after our arrival from New York. In a harrowing three-hour session, their attitude was so hostile and defensive (despite the presence of Malgorzata Koszelew, Cultural Program Officer from the U.S. Embassy; and Pawel Pniewski, our Polish Technical and Logistical Director) that we had serious doubts as to whether the performance could go forward. Indicative of their attitude, the Theater was unwilling to rent a concert quality piano despite conditions they had agreed upon specified in our tech rider. Malgorzata offered the possibility of borrowing the piano from the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, boosting our morale and chances of a successful performance. The technical crew of the theater couldn’t have been more accommodating, generous and welcoming in contrast to the administration. \

2000 Continued:

SO… We asked our media rep, Justyna Golinska, to redouble her efforts in contacting the press. Her work resulted in prominent photo placements in the main newspapers, and an audience of 175 (with the theater closed down to its chamber size, this constituted a full house.) The Company danced beautifully and we received the unexpected compliments of the Theater Manager at the end, which we accepted with alacrity.

Battery’s was the only performance of the 40 presented by Festival Feta that was staged indoors. In rainy cold Gdansk, this was the only way and the Festival organizers didn’t want to risk the possibility of cancelling Battery’s performance for several reasons. We were the only American group participating; the first dance company ever presented by the Festival; and were billed as a headline act. Given the fact that the preponderance of the Festival events were of an extremely avant-garde style in a very large scale (ie. Acrobats suspended over the market square by hot air balloon, tight-rope walkers, actors on stilts, etc.) we worried that our show would appear too tame and conservative to the huge and mostly young audience.

In this respect, our worries were unfounded: we enjoyed numerous curtain calls and “bravo’s” from an overflow audience. It was a heartening experience in every way. We had a superb guide called our “pilot” who was totally invested in making us comfortable and supported. We were put up in a first class hotel and shuttled around the city by taxi. Last minute requests for rehearsal space for our dancers and musicians were fielded successfully. One of the most incredible, touching events of Battery’s history took place here: when we made our initial tour of the theater, we spied some beautiful, natural canvas or linen fabric draperies hung as borders and drops in the enormous space. We assumed they were for some opera or theater production. However, we were informed that they were made especially for us!

Our elation was slightly tempered when we found out that our tech schedule would be interrupted for four hours during the day of the performance while the resident theater company held a previously unannounced rehearsal on stage.
Tributes also go to our dancers, who performed that night without having rehearsed previously in the lighting cues (they were being loaded into the lighting board as they rehearsed.) The show was one of our best despite the shaky preparation process, in large part because of the commodious stage, but even more of a factor was the electricity emanating from the enormous audience.

This project by Batter Dance Company was instigated by Hanna Strzmiecka, a choreographer and leader of the dance community in Lublin.

Finding that the available theaters in Lublin offered stage dimensions inadequate for BDC, she proposed to the local branch of Polish Television that they host a public performance by BDC in their studio while creating a video recording for future broadcast. The studio accommodates an audience of approximately 100. The television people took responsibility for organizing hotel accommodations and meals for the Company and agreed to handle local transportation.

However, they failed to meet us at the train station and we were left to our own devises for the first ½ day in which we were in Lublin (They later reimbursed us for our meals and cab fares, and began their patronage in earnest on the second day of our stay.) However, it wasn’t until the actual day of taping that certain issues were resolved. Worried about the interference of a live audience and interested in taping several run-throughs rather than a single performance, the station cancelled its earlier plans to have a live audience. Because they had waited so long to begin production details such as lighting, laying a dance floor, organizing the rehearsal and taping schedule, and because we discovered that the production team were unaccustomed to recording dance, we ended up deciding in favor of recording only Zero…Two…Blue…Heaven…Seven, our newest work and the one that involved live music. To complete a 30 minute program (the dance work is only 18 minutes in length), the t.v. people expressed an interest in interviewing the collaborative team of choreographer (Jonathan Hollander) and Frank Carlberg, composer/pianist. They were very excited about the results and have proposed creating a similar production of “Layapriya”

While in Lublin, we were able to rehearse at Hanna’s studio, and to meet with her and her protégé, the young choreographer Tomasz Siwek. We also visited the Teatr NN in the Brama Grodzka where we met the directors Witold Dabrowski and Tomasz Pietrasiewicz whose work on the Memory Project was deeply impressive.

Battery's performance at the Kraków 2000 was a wonderful surprise. We were greeted by a standing-room-only crowd including Cesar Beltran, our host from the American Embassy in Warsaw, Mark Toner, Bronia, Tim and others from the Consulate in Kraków.

There were many dancers and theater students in the audience as well. The full audience was a surprise because it had been depressingly apparent that the administration of the Kraków 2000 Festival had done everything possible to sabotage the Dance Festival. They had not published any brochures or leaflets advertising the Festival -- a fact which stood out baldly in contrast to the other components of the 2000 event (ie.The Jewish Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Street Theater Festival) all of which were lavishly and extensively marketed. We had been told that Philippe Saire, a well-known choreographer from Switzerland, whose company opened the festival, had performed for 37 people! BDC assumed that they owe the large audience to a natural build over the course of the Festival swelled for us by those who responded to the invitation to our performance and a reception issued by the American Embassy. The stage was very small at the Theater School, PWST, but the lighting equipment, piano and sound were excellent, and the setting was very comfortable for the audience.

The location just outside the center of Kraków was a tremendous improvement over the location where we performed in 1996 - the Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury - where some of the other dance companies were scheduled to perform this season. The Theater school appears to be a good partner for the Silesian Dance Theater in future. The Director and Administrator were both very cordial and welcoming. Our accommodations in Kraków, put together at the last minute by Roman Kusnierz, Managing Director of the Silesian Dance Theatre, were wonderful -- particularly for the five of us who stayed at the apartments of the Jagellonian University in the old center of Kraków.