Please see Germany 2010 Overview for Narrative of Frankfurt and Wiesbaden.

Battery Dance Company’s Dancing to Connect program in Germany entered its 5th season in June, 2010, with workshops stretching across 10 cities in 4 Federal States. The over-arching theme of the 2010 program was Inclusion/Exclusion. This theme was first posited by Inka Thunecke, Director of the Heinrich-Böll- Stiftung-Brandenburg, at the end of the 2009 iteration of Dancing to Connect that had been centered on the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and on which H-B-S-B and BDC had first collaborated. Inka was inspired by the impact of the teaching artists of Battery Dance Company and its partners from Drastic Action who she had seen working with children of Turkish immigrants in Berlin and learning disabled jobless youth in the depressed town of Eberswalde. She had witnessed how the DtC project injected a spirit of optimism, empowerment and self-realization for these ‘have-nots’ of German society.

10 American teaching artists from Battery Dance Company and Drastic Action collaborated on the Dancing to Connect workshops in 2010, with program management handled by BDC Artistic Director and technical support for each of the five culminating performances by BDC’s production designer.

In the original plan, German free-lance dancers and dance teachers would have been trained in the Dancing to Connect methodology in each city where workshops were held. In this way, the gains of DtC could be multiplied even after the American artists had departed. Unfortunately, funding was not sufficient to realize this plan in full; however, in five of the cities -- Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Potsdam, Wittenberg and Witten – training was held with local teaching partners. In the first two cities, trainees were selected from the pool of graduate students in the Masters Degree program in Contemporary Dance Pedagogy at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. Throughout the tour, an Australian dancer accompanied the team, gaining training through a fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts.

The multi-layered, international cast of characters that had come together to forward Dancing to Connect in Germany might appear to be the result of a carefully constructed business plan. However, the truth is very different: In 2005, we envisioned the project in Germany to be a one-off event.

Looking back at the formative stages that had laid the groundwork for this unexpected evolution in Germany, a conversation in Washington with a long-time staffer at the Department of State’s Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau had provided guidance that was pivotal. She suggested that we apply for Speakers Grants from the US Embassy in Berlin in order to lay the groundwork for what was, at the time, a small and contained program. The meetings and talks with different stakeholders in Freiburg and Berlin, representatives of educational, funding and community institutions, yielded unexpected results. It was suggested that we exploit the opportunity of having our dance companies in Germany to work with youth in schools. Here was one of the keys to our success: the fact that the formative notion of a youth outreach program was offered by the host country. In the next 6 years, unimagined developments occurred: the project continued in Freiburg for the next three years but also expanded to 23 other cities; funding continued every year from the US Embassy in Berlin and Consulates in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Leipzig; but in 2009 and 2010, U.S. support was overtaken by support from the German Government and German foundations, guaranteeing the growth and sustainability of the program.

Please see Germany 2010 Overview for the narrative in Aachen, Bochum-Wattenscheid, Essen-Kray, and Witten.

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.

Battery Dance Company made its Thailand debut and conducted an extensive array of outreach programs in July, 2013. The one-week program in Bangkok was organized by the U.S. Embassy in teamwork with Busakorn “Apple” Chantaravorameth of rumPUREE World Dance studio.

The overall project was deemed a success.

U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney wrote:

“I just wanted to let you know what a huge success the Battery Dance Company was last night in Bangkok. Thank you for sending them our way. They were charming, artistically flawless and made a wonderful impact with children who might not otherwise know the joy of dancing.”

BDC Teaching Artist Robin Cantrell reflected on her experience:

This was the most intense Dancing to Connect I've ever dealt with. Half of my students came from a place called the Mercy Center, which is a home in the city for orphaned children, many of whom are HIV +. The others came from The Center For Protection of Children's Rights Foundation. This is a home just outside of the city for girls who were either victims of human trafficking, or were sexually or physically abused by their families and needed to be removed from their homes.

Most of the girls had been in these group homes from a very young age. I'm sure they were not considered a part of many normal social groups. They have very few belongings but are given a small weekly allowance which they mostly spend on candy. They seemed to be very reliant on one another for protection and comfort.

These girls have deep emotional issues that they are currently, and will likely always, be working through. I treated them very differently than I've treated DtC groups in the past. For example, one troubled girl came in and instead of participating in warm up, sat at my feet and watched warm up. Normally, I would find this unacceptable, but in this case, I let the girls determine when they were ready to be involved with the group. They also had a habit of retreating into themselves, going to another place mentally and emotionally when they were asked to do something that made them uncomfortable. I can only imagine that this is a strategic coping mechanism for dealing with sexual abuse.

This group had difficulty with concentration, emotion, and trust, but based on their backgrounds, this was all to be expected. The stories that their teachers, social workers, and they themselves shared with me were horrifying. Every day I would go home, shower and cry, then become angry with the monsters who could do such terrible things to such sweet little girls. In the end, this was probably the most rewarding group I've ever worked with. These girls were already so strong for having made it through such traumatic early life events. I was very proud of everything they accomplished. Their piece was last in the performance. They were not the strongest dancers, but I think they presented the most feeling, and gave a very strong show.

The entire Battery Dance Company team lavished praise on the organizing team of Kanchalee “Kelly” Jitjang and Busakorn “Apple” Chantaravorameth for their superior skills in facilitating what was, in the end, a very complicated program. BDC Artistic Director was supposed to be part of the team in Thailand but had to return to New York City due to a family emergency. As such, the BDC team carried on without a central project manager and was particularly impressed at how smoothly issues like transportation, snacks and meals were coordinated.

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.

Battery Dance Company took part in the X Biennal del Juego (Produced by La Mancha) in Montevideo, Uruguay. This arrangement came about through an introduction from the Uruguayan poet, Luis Bravo, to Ariel Castelo, an arts producer in Montevideo. Battery Dance Company had worked with Luis in November, 2012, through a collaboration with the US Department of State and the University of Iowa International Writing Program.

When the dancers arrived in Montevideo, they were taken to their hotel at the gateway of the Old City. It was a very good location and charming edifice, but the rooms that Robin and Sean were assigned were extremely small, cold and noisy. Similarly to the hotel, the food was provided by La Mancha and ranged from wonderful feasts to low end fast food.

Everything was walkable, but La Mancha volunteers normally picked up and delivered Sean and Robin to / from the hotel.

La Mancha, Ariel’s organization, hosts a Biennal with imaginative themes every other year in Montevideo. They were looking for workshop leaders and performers and the theme of the five senses that governed this year’s Biennal was a perfect fit for Battery Dance Company. They originally sought the entire company’s participation, but funding was a barrier. As a result, a two-person program was devised. Underwriting funds for the project were split between La Mancha, which purchased the international air tickets, covered the cost of hotel, meals and local transportation and production costs. The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation funding covered the honoraria and a stipend towards incidental expenses.

Each Biennal is organized around a theme, and each sequence of three Biennals explore different aspect of the same theme. This year, the theme was the five senses; and in two years, another aspect of this concept will be explored.

Approximately 200 participants signed up for the program and were split into three groups. The concept was that each of the three groups would rotate through a series of workshops with each group having one session with each of the three workshop leaders. BDC’s teaching artists Robin Cantrell and Sean Scantlebury served as a team, leading one workshop. Jose Posada, originally from Uruguay but now living and working in Berlin, and Karen Bernal of Mexico ran the other two. In Jose’s workshop, participants were blind-folded and weren’t allowed to speak for 3 hours. Karen employed her background in circus techniques (she is a former cast member of Cirque de Soleil) as the medium for her workshops. Sean and Robin used the Dancing to Connect methodology in theirs.

Robin and Sean noticed a difference in the tenor of each group, most notably depending upon whether theirs was the first workshop, or whether the participants were coming from one of the other workshops. The group of participants who had just experienced Jose’s workshop were very subdued and obviously impacted by the experience of blind and silence. The group that came from Karen’s workshop were much more boisterous.

Robin and Sean were the only non-fluent Spanish speakers in the entire Biennal, though Robin was able to recover much of her high school level Spanish and by the end of the program, she was able to deliver a speech to the entire Biennal in Spanish. There were interpreters for the 3 workshops and Karen assisted with the 4th, impromptu workshop.

The first performance by Battery Dance Company took place on Wednesday evening, the day after R and S arrived in Montevideo. They had prepared a 5-minute duet which they were able to perform on a marble floor (slippery, hard and cold) in the foyer of the Sodre Theater which is the largest and most illustrious theater in Montevideo. The audience (Biennal participants and volunteers) – sat on the giant staircases of the foyer. BDC Dancers, Robin and Sean, rearranged the spacing of the duet in order to circumnavigate a large central sculpture. The music was well-amplified and the audience gave a warm response despite the fact that the dancers didn’t feel terribly comfortable about the space, the floor and the setting.

The second performance was held in a theater space in the Museo de Carnaval. The space was cavernous, like a barn, with a wooden platform. Unfortunately, there was no dance flooring and nail heads protruded from the surface of the platform. The dancers covered the nails with gaffers tape before the show, however, Sean cut his toe on one that hadn’t been covered.

Similar to the staging, the lighting was also improvised. It was set up in an X pattern, resulting in triangles of darkness. The dancers did what they could to accommodate this, but it was difficult for them to be seen through out the whole performance. Robin and Sean performed two duets choreographed by Robin, with a solo by Sean in the middle – approximately 30 minutes of material. This was a stand-alone event that had a surprise element in that it wasn’t pre-publicized. All the participants and volunteers of the Biennal attended and the response was exceptional. Battery Dance Company received a standing ovation, tears and strong emotions were tangible since this performance came at the end of all of the workshops.

YouthAction is a charitable organization in Belfast with a 70-year history of working with young people across religious and social divides. YA sourced the participants, who ranged in age from 14 – 19, as well as engaging teacher trainees in their early 20’s. This program was Battery Dance Company’s first in the U.K. and was built on the theme of mutual trust, incorporating students from both Catholic and Protestant communities which suffused the choreography created by the participants themselves. Peter McKittrick, Public Four workshops of 20+ hours each were conducted with students from a variety of schools around Belfast. Each day the students generated dance material of their own, guided by the BDC Teaching Artists and assisted by local trainees. An additional day of workshops was coordinated for two groups by Public Affairs Specialist Peter McKittrick, allowing participants to further refine their choreography. Choreography was assembly and eventually resulted in finished works of 8 – 10 minutes in length.

Four workshops of 20+ hours each were conducted with students from a variety of schools around Belfast. Each day the students generated dance material of their own, guided by the BDC Teaching Artists and assisted by local trainees. An additional day of workshops was coordinated for two groups by Public Affairs Specialist Peter McKittrick, allowing participants to further refine their choreography. Choreography was assembly and eventually resulted in finished works of 8 – 10 minutes in length.

A final performance was staged at the prestigious Waterfront, a new and popular theater complex located on the River Lagan, near the City Center. U.S. Consul General Gregory S. Burton attended with his wife and gave opening remarks. The performance was a standing-room-only event. Battery Dance Company performed three works from its repertoire and the 4 student groups presented their completed choreographies, with custom made projections that incorporated the natural and historical scenery from Belfast and Northern Ireland. The production received numerous curtain calls from an enthusiastic public audience that gave a standing ovation.

Fresh from the experience of conducting Dancing to Connect in the Nord Pas de Calais towns around Maubeuge in 2013, arrangements were made by the US Embassy in Paris for Battery Dance Company to have a follow-up program the next year in Trappes en Yvelines in the Île de France region. Trappes has a certain notoriety in France due to the manifestations that occurred there in years past between the immigrant population and the police; but is also known as the home of the popular comedian Jamel Debbouze.

The target group was to be composed of teenagers and young adults with an emphasis on the immigrant population. Discussions also included the possibility of involving a group of senior citizens, either in their own group, or mixed in with teens in a multi-generational approach. Various departments of the City Government of Trappes were called into play and initially it seemed as if we would have a diverse group with a full complement of participants including a small group of adults and senior citizens. Likewise, we were to have participants and trainers from the local, very renowned hip-hop group, Black Blanc Beur. In reality, the 3Bs were uninvolved with the exception of one very talented and motivated young man, Youss, who was a valuable contributor to the program. Likewise only 1 senior, 2 adult moms and 1 young adult male social worker joined with the 40 teen participants. There was a notable reluctance to participate among many of the teens who appeared to be in vacation mode and uninterested in exerting themselves; and drop-outs were aplenty. From the plan of having 5 separate groups, it was decided to consolidate 4 of the groups into 2, with Robin and Mira forming one team; Carmen and Sean forming another; and Clement maintaining his own group.

Choreography was assembled and eventually resulted in finished works of 8 – 10 minutes in length.

A final performance was staged at La Merise, a theater located in the center of Trappes. Benoît Hamon, then Minister of Education, attended the performance with a full complement of officers from the US Embassy Paris including Phil Breeden, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs and his wife Laurence; Cultural Affairs Officer Jennifer Rasamimanana who addressed the audience at the beginning of the show, alongside Deputy Mayor Phil Gueroult. The performance was a standing-room-only event. Battery Dance Company performed three works from its repertoire and the 4 student groups presented their completed choreographies, with custom made projections that incorporated the natural and historical scenery from Belfast and Northern Ireland. The production received numerous curtain calls from an enthusiastic public audience that gave a standing ovation.