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.