About Battery Dance

For nearly three decades, New York based Battery Dance Company has represented the U.S. overseas and has developed multi-layered and often bilateral international cultural engagement programs in the realm of dance and the performing arts.

We recommend listening to Jonathan Hollander's oral history of Battery Dance company from a radio interview he gave at a recent trip to Malaysia here.

Battery Dance Company introduced a creative workshop process for youth in Germany in 2006 that has since been named Dancing to Connect. DtC programs have since spread nationally across Germany, Asia, Africa and at home in the U.S.

In 70 countries throughout the world, Battery Dance Company has built partnerships with dance artists, musicians, arts managers, arts institutions, government agencies, universities, conservatories, schools and other dance companies to foster cultural outreach and mutual understanding. 

Battery Dance Company’s international mission is fueled by the belief that dancers can span geographic, linguistic and cultural borders through bilateral exchange. They share inspiration and advance mutual understanding among their communities while aspiring to transcend political and social ills. 

The exchange process enriches the artists who gain new sources for creative exploration and dynamic interchange with their colleagues abroad. The public shares in the fruits of these collaborations through access to performances, television broadcasts and outreach activities such as workshops, master classes and seminars.

View the Tour Timeline

Listening Well is the Best Advice

Your time line will depend upon that of your primary international partner.  The tricky part is that most substantial international programs have several partners -- for example, a local host institution that invites you to perform or teach, the local U.S. Embassy or Post that agrees to help you with funding and facilitative support, a corporation that is willing to provide cash or in-kind sponsorship, and/or a foundation that is interested in your mission and offers a grant.  

It is quite likely that each of these entities has its own timeline and that adhering to one may bar you from meeting the deadline of the other(s).

When dealing with the State Department, there is a basic conundrum. Good projects have a year or two of planning behind them; but rarely can DOS officers concentrate on a project more than a few months beforehand, being completely consumed with day-to-day tasks and projects.   

It has often been my experience that a cultural or public affairs officer will start up a conversation about a program a year or so in advance; but when I try to push the envelope forward, to get to the budget, program planning and grant execution stage, I cannot regain the person’s attention.  

My advice is to listen carefully and get a sense of the operating style of the key person and/or department or Embassy and try to glean how much you need to conform to their way of working and/or how much you can exert your own sense of timely practice into the collaboration.

The Most Successful Programs are those that Build and Grow  

Battery Dance Company’s best results have been achieved by programs that build from a small launch (speaker program, cultural envoy, or two-person mini programs) into larger editions over a span of a year or two or even more.  

It is common sense:  You get to know your partners and they get to know you and your program, and both sides can take better advantage of the strengths of the other. Many of our programs (in Taiwan, Germany, Poland [shown above], India, in Sri Lanka) began as a single concept and then, over many years, took on new shape and dimension that we couldn’t have predicted at the onset.

Arts programs are not one-size-fits-all.  It is important to allow yourself to be guided by those who really know the territory. 

Collaboration comes as second nature to many people in the arts -- and international cultural engagement will take full advantage of your ability to collaborate in ways you never anticipated!  

Think of the process as the building of partnerships.  Your potential partners could be your artistic counterparts overseas, other American colleagues who have worked in the country where you are headed, international arts managers or Embassy Public Affairs staff, especially those who have been in country for a couple of years.  Ask them to help you select from a variety of approaches that are comfortable and suited to your company’s repertoire and/or menu of programs.  

Performances are the grand finale but your impact is strengthened and your interaction with local communities enhanced through Seminars, Workshops, Outreach events, etc.  

Flexibility and adaptability are key traits.  The only caution is to avoid taking on a project that doesn’t suit your artistic or social aesthetic or mission.  You have to be clear about your strengths and weaknesses, and/or any rules that govern your institutional behavior.  

Years ago, we were being wooed by top executives of a corporation based in Africa.  As much as we wanted to accept their generous sponsorship offers, we couldn’t do so -- their main product was tobacco, and we work with youth.  We had to forgo a potentially lucrative opportunity because this simply wasn’t the right message for Battery Dance Company.

On the positive side, where re-imagining our mission produced amazing results:  In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we worked with the local PEPFAR (the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) office, modulating our Dancing to Connect program to focus on the stigma of HIV+ and AIDS prevention.  This allowed the Embassy to double up on its goals of engaging youth (our Dancing to Connect program brings choreographic skills to high school students and young adults) and helping spread awareness and education around the illness that is afflicting an astonishing number of people in Africa.

It scares me just to write these words.  Imagine how we felt in Amman, Jordan, when several of our personal bags and our COSTUME CASE didn’t arrive from Tunisia.  I still remember rummaging through the closets and chests of our extremely thoughtful and caring Embassy CAO and her husband, the dancers trying on various garments to see if they could find something suitable to perform in the next night at the Noor-Hussein Cultural Center.  Fortunately, the costumes ended up arriving an hour or so before the show so we looked a little wrinkled but appropriately attired.
 

Hangers, Woolite, Shout, white tissue paper, Fabreze and sewing kit.

It sounds like the way Eloise at the Plaza would have packed, these things are essential. You need these items to maintain your costumes on a long (often dirty) tour.  And trust BDC, you cannot depend upon a theater anywhere in the world to provide plastic hangers.   Wrapping damp costumes in white tissue paper can mitigate the ill effects of packing after a show; and Fabreze can render a garment wearable even if there was no time to wash it between shows.

Here’s a special secret for costume-heavy productions:  Find out if you can keep costumes hanging up to dry overnight in the dressing room of your theater after the performance (if you aren’t leaving on a 7 a.m. flight the next morning!).

This way, you or the stage manager or delegated dancer can return to the theater and pack DRY costumes for your next show rather than throwing sweaty costumes into a case and digging through the moist malodorous garments upon arrival at your next destination.  

If the dressing rooms are not an option, try to convince your dancers (or actors) to be responsible for their own costumes and hang them in the shower over night.   Another interesting option: get some large standing fans and direct them at the costumes on a rack during the performance -- as the dancers come off stage and change, instead of hurling the wet stuff into a corner, hang them up and blow them dry!  

Once, in Trivandrum, India, where it was at least 95 degrees on stage, BDC were allowed to hang our costumes to dry overnight.  There was no garment rack per se, so the company tech director rigged a rope between two walls of the dressing room and all of the sweaty costumes were hanging there.  

The next morning, the company was horrified to find the entire bunch of costumes in a disgusting pile on the floor:  the rope had broken and everything fell together on the filthy floor.  UGH!

One of BDC Director, Jonathan Hollander's favorite memories is of a performance in Lucknow, India.  

With this particular costume-heavy production with lots of printed silk garments, the company had requested an iron and ironing board at every one of the 17 theaters they were touring.  

Normally, a sputtering, rusted iron was provided, scaring the daylights out of BDC with the thought of scorches and rust stains.  

Well, in Lucknow, an iron-wallah showed up, must have been about 80 years old, with a huge, heavy implement and a small board.  

The implement turned out to be an iron and into it, he placed hot coals.  Well -- to the companies Western-bred minds, the combination of fine silks and burning coals did not go together at all.  But BDC was proved completely wrong.  

 This little man with his big iron produced the smoothest, most beautifully pleated costumes ever!