Battery Dance Company performed here as a part of its Dancing to Connect program in February 2011. This was a groundbreaking, multinational project uniting Israeli and Palestinian teens through dance for the first time in Bochum, Germany. Four BDC teaching artists conducted an intensive week of workshops with mixed groups of students from Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Bochum, brought together under the auspices of Encounters, Peter Maffay Foundation & the NRW Government. A trilateral youth exchange, this iteration of Dancing to Connect aimed to train the young people as mediators in the Middle East conflict and as exemplars of tolerance and dialogue. DtC introduced the universal languages of dance and music to build communicative bridges among students whose backgrounds are starkly polarized. This program was continued in June when the same German and Palestinian youth were invited to Israel to continue the historic collaboration. See Kfar Menachem, Israel for more information.