For the second year in a row, Battery Dance transformed its Dancing to Connect methodology to address the humanitarian issue of refugee integration across the German nation. The plan for 2017 included two phases, necessitated by the school schedules in the Federal States of Baden-Württemberg, Sachsen-Anhalt and Brandenburg.

Each workshop followed the parameters Battery Dance employs in all of its Dancing to Connect programs: +/- 20 students, ages 14 and up, comprise each workshop. Twenty hours of workshop time were spent in the creation of an original dance work in which the participants generate movement sequences that are shaped by BD teaching artists and their teacher trainees into works of choreography which the participants perform on a large stage with fully professional theatrical conditions alongside performances by Battery Dance from its repertoire.

The unique element of this initiative is in the composition of each workshop group – a mixture of refugees, some of whom are unaccompanied minors, with their German counterparts. Changes were observed in each workshop – German students began to cross the chasm that separates them from refugees, refugees became more at ease in expressing themselves physically and verbally, stories were shared and empathy increased. By the performance day, groups were cheering each other, participants from different backgrounds formed an indivisible ensemble, pride was overflowing. Refugees from conflict zones in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Kosovo, Gambia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and elsewhere had made their way to Germany in harrowing conditions, escaping from unimaginable devastation. Seeing them free themselves, at least temporarily, from the grip of their nightmarish past, and their hankering for their families and friends back home, was tremendously moving.

An evaluation of the program was undertaken by BD staff using matched entrance and exit questionnaires filled out by participants in each of the three program sites. The results have since been analyzed and reveal several significant improvements experienced by the participants of the program.

In the words of Chargé d’Affairs Kent Logsdon, U.S. Embassy Berlin:

I would like to take this opportunity to commend Jonathan Hollander and his dancers for all that they do to promote intercultural understanding. Over the past twenty years, the Battery Dance Company has performed in over 60 countries on 6 continents. It is a dance troupe of international renown. But what makes the Battery Dance truly incredible is its commitment to the Dancing to Connect initiative that it launched over a decade ago.

Both my wife Michell (U.S. Embassy Cultural Attaché) and I have devoted our careers to diplomacy. We have both seen many worthwhile and gratifying examples of cultural diplomacy. Well, Battery Dance is cultural diplomacy – dance diplomacy – at its best. It brings people together through creativity and team building. As Jonathan Hollander says: "You can't dance with someone you don’t trust."

In my opinion, that is the key to the Battery Dance’s success as an agent of change and social action. Dancing to Connect has held workshops focused on providing hope, confidence, leadership and life skills to the least advantaged youth in society. It has conducted sessions focused on combating xenophobia and ending discrimination whether it be based on religion, nationality, ethnicity, age, or class. It has shown how public perceptions of the disabled can be changed, and brought attention to the needs of disabled communities around the world.

They are all part now of a broader community, not just here in Freiburg, but a global Dancing to Connect community. For just as Dancing to Connect becomes embedded in the countries it visits, it also communicates a sense of awareness of the world as a whole and an openness to different cultures. This in the inspiration and passion that drives Jonathan and his dancers. And it is something that we can all learn from.

CITY-BY-CITY PROGRAM SUMMARIES

Mumbai

The India tour opened with a performance at St. Andrew’s Auditorium in Bandra on January 11th before a packed audience of approximately 700. U.S. Consul General Edgard Kagan, ICCR Regional Director M.K. Malik and Jonathan Hollander addressed the audience at the top of the show, after which four works were presented, two contemporary pieces from the Battery repertoire (a commissioned work by South African choreographer Theo Ndindwa, a recipient of the prestigious Mandela Fellowship, and the other by Battery Dance senior dancer Sean Scantlebury;) a classical Bharatanatyam solo by Unnath Hassan Rathnaraju, and SHAKTI, A Return to the Source performed by the entire company. ICCR provided an emcee and the U.S. Consulate produced handsome placards with headshots and biographies of each of the 8 members of the Company that were displayed on easels in the lobby of the theater. Niloufer Sagar, COO of the Terence Lewis Dance Company, and Radhika Jhaveri, a marketing executive related to Hollander’s AFS Exchange family, provided local support by putting a hold on the hall, liaising with ICCR re the ticketing process and manning a table at the lobby of the theater in order to check in those guests invited by Battery Dance, Asia Society and Terence Lewis, who has a huge following on social media. Radhika handled communications with the local dance schools and NGO’s that serve street children, arranging for 8 workshops that the Company conducted during its time in Mumbai. Battery Dance Board Member Laura Entwistle enabled Battery Dance to run two workshops at a government facility for girls rescued from sex trafficking, following on the earlier experience she had facilitated in Delhi and Badlapur in 2014 through her NGO, EmancipAction. Hollander was invited to represent arts and culture in a panel discussion at the Essar House as part of the ‘Avid Learning’ programs with American Consulate’s David Moo moderating and Manjeet Kripalani, Bharat Joshi and Royston Braganza as fellow panelists.

Pune

A public performance at the Yashwantrao Chavan Auditorium was presented to an audience of approximately 600, hosted by Pune’s leading Bharatanatyam dancers Sucheta Chapekar and her daughter Arundhati Patwardhan as the opening event of the 30th Anniversary Season of their Kalavardhini Trust. One day earlier, the Company had presented a 2-hour lecture-demonstration and Q/A session at a new dance center under the auspices of well-known choreographer Shama Bhate and her Kathak institute, NADROOP. While four of the Company’s dancers returned to Mumbai to teach workshops, Hollander and Sean Scantlebury stayed behind in Pune. Scantlebury conducted a two-day advanced contemporary dance workshop for senior dance students at the Lalit Kala Kendra, the performing arts division of Pune University. Assistant Professor of Lalit Kala Kendra and well-known Bharatanatyam performer and choreographer Parimal Phadke interviewed Hollander on stage at Lalit Kala Kendra in a 90-minute talk on Hollander’s career as a dancer, choreographer and arts manager. A talk focused on the infrastructure and support for the arts in America was given by Hollander at FLAME University for students of business and arts; and an interactive session was held at Kathak dance guru Prerana Deshpande’s institute Nrityadham with members of her dance company and Hollander, who had presented Deshpande in Battery Dance’s summer festival in New York many years earlier.

Bangaluru

Over the past 17 years since Battery Dance’s last performance in Bengaluru, the metro has become a nexus for dance activity with many dance schools teaching classical Indian forms and others concentrating on contemporary dance. Battery Dance’s performance in Bengaluru was highly anticipated as were its workshops and master classes at three important dance centers. The Company’s performance was presented at the centrally located Guru Nanak Bhavan and was attended by leading dancers, choreographers, dance writers and governmental officials and a general audience of over 700. Earlier in the day, The Oberoi Bengaluru hosted a press meet for the Company with representatives of 5 of the leading local print media as well as Ashish Mohan Khokar, one of India’s most highly respected dance scholars. Battery Dance’s teaching artists conducted three contemporary dance master classes for students who had never experienced American contemporary dance before at Mithun Shyam’s Vaishnavi Natyashala Institute of Bharatanatyam and Nirupama & Rajendra’s Abhinava Kathak Dance Institution. Two workshops were offered to the contemporary dance students at Attakalari. Jonathan Hollander delivered a lecture on arts management using Battery Dance as a case study for undergraduate business administration and arts students at REVA University; and spoke to the dancers at each of the workshops before the practical training began.

Kolkata

Battery Dance returned to Kolkata for the first time since 2001 with a performance at the city’s prestigious Kala Mandir Auditorium. Over a thousand spectators attended the performance that was introduced by U.S. Consul General Craig Hall, ICCR Regional Director Mr. Venugopal, and Jonathan Hollander. Three workshops were conducted in for the students and company members of two important dance companies -- the acclaimed Tanusree Shankar Dance Company and Sudarshan Chakravorty’s Sapphire Dance Company, yielding invitations to return in both cases. Jonathan Hollander lectured at the Bickram Ghosh Academy of Performing Arts for a combined program organized by Arkadev Bhattacharya and his Niharika Centre for Performing Arts; followed by a creative movement workshop led by Clement Mensah. Interviews were set up by the U.S. Consulate with the Times of India and other leading media outlets, yielding lavish coverage before and after the Company’s stay in Kolkata. Among all of the workshops which Hollander supervised, he also made time to meet with contemporary dancer/choreographer and entrepreneur Vikram Iyengar and to visit the Pickle Factory, a recommissioned cinema hall that is being converted into a performance venue for dance, theater and visual arts.

New Delhi

The final performance of Battery’s tour took place at Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Juster, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs Jeffrey Sexton, Sangeet Natak Akademi Chairperson Shekhar Sen, ICCR President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, ICCR Director General Ambassador Riva Ganguly Das and the Hindustani classical music maestros Rajan and Sajan Mishra in the front row. Despite some injuries and illnesses, the Company managed to pull out a flawless performance that won the appreciation of the diplomats as well as leading dance artists Geeta Chandran, Rama and Dakshina Vaidyanathan, Rajesh and Rakesh Sai Babu, and dean of Indian dance scholarship and criticism Dr. Sunil Kothari. Many of these dance icons had attended a talk and video showing by Jonathan Hollander hosted at The Atelier in Lado Sarai as part of the Desmania Foundation program of arts talks the day before the performance. Workshops for Heemanshu Sharma’s That’s Dance group and Sohaila Kapur’s theater workshop brought Battery teaching artists in contact with 40 high level freelance dancers and actors in Delhi and resulted in invitations for continued affiliations in both cases.

Lucknow

While the Company was on tour, Jonathan Hollander was named a recipient of the inaugural Arjun Mishra Award, and arrangements were made for him to travel to Lucknow to deliver a speech and receive the award. The award commemorated the Kathak dancer and guru, Arjun Mishra, who had headed the Lucknow Kathak Kendra since 1998 and whose American tour Jonathan had organized in 1995. Arjun’s son and daughter, Anuj and Kantika, are now two of the leading young Kathak dancers in India and continue operating the school that Arjun built with the help of Anuj’s wife Neha. They currently inculcate hundreds of students in Lucknow. Anuj arranged a press conference and performance at a theater in Lucknow where his students performed and where Hollander delivered an address and was presented with the award with various television and print media interviews.

PRE-TOUR PREPARATION AND COMMENTARY

Battery Dance has long fostered the goal of bringing its artistry and arts education outreach programs to Bangladesh. Artistic Director Jonathan Hollander and the Battery Dancers had performed for Begum Khalida Zia during her visit to the U.N. in New York in the early 1990s and a plan had emerged with the US Embassy in Dhaka to bring Battery Dance to Bangladesh. But financial and management concerns at the time foiled the plan.

The fatal attack on foreigners in a popular café in July, 2016, and concerns about other terrorist cells in the country, had quashed any consideration of in-coming cultural diplomacy programs.
When an opportunity emerged to add Bangladesh to the 2018 India tour which included a program in Kolkata, a short flight from Dhaka, a conversation ensued with the PAO Nicholas Papp at Embassy Dhaka who examined the possibility with careful attention to security issues as well as the potential for attracting local institutions as hosts. Once Embassy clearances were in place, Post applied to ECA for an Arts Envoy grant to supplement its own funds and set about building local support for the program.

On Battery’s side, Hollander had established various touchpoints with Bangladesh years earlier, by choreographing nine songs by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Laureate whose giant imprint was equally felt in East and West Bengal and who composed national anthems for both India and Bangladesh. More recently, Hollander had met arts and culture leaders from Dhaka in New York including painter Jamal Ahmed, head of the art department at the University of Dhaka, with Samia Zaman, a television anchor and film producer from Bangladesh, currently stationed in New York; MD Tokon, a rising star in both New York and Bangladesh, invited Hollander to his studio in Brooklyn to see new work that was subsequently displayed at the recent art exhibition in Dhaka.

When Nicholas Papp discovered that RTV CEO Syed Ashik Rahman was visiting New York on a private trip, he suggested a meeting with Hollander, who arranged an informal get-together at his home. This meeting bore fruit: Rahman arranged a 20-minute talk show interview with Hollander; arranged for RTV crew to cover the entire Battery Dance tour documentary style and agreed to cover the cost of filming and editing a music video with the Battery dancers which Hollander had planned with Bangladeshi singer Shwapnil Shojib.

Papp put EMK Center Director MK Aaref in touch with Hollander when it emerged that Aaref was planning a private trip to New York in the Fall of 2017. Aaref’s arrival coincided with a reception at the home of one of Battery Dance’s Board Members, to which Aaref was invited and saw a video and heard a report of the Company’s recently concluded program on refugee integration in Germany.

Adding to this extensive list of U.S.-Bangladeshi coincidences: Hollander met with Ms. Naz Georgas, Executive Director of Cordoba House, a non-profit interfaith Muslim organization in New York City, in December, 2017, and discovered that her father, S. M Rashed Ahmed, was a former Ambassador from Bangladesh to Japan and special U.N. Envoy to Kosovo. Papp invited Ambassador and Mrs. Ahmed to a dinner reception that he hosted for the Company; also including Ashik Rahman, Shwapnil Shojib and Embassy staff members.

Through a 1-year FB conversation between Bangladeshi singer Shwapnil Shojib and Hollander, whose shared interest in Rabindra Sangeet initially brought them into contact, a plan emerged to incorporate an American song, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, in a rendition sung by Shojib, into the Battery Dance performance. The motivation for this collaboration was to underline the theme of peace, non-violence and tolerance which had become the subtext of Battery Dance’s visit program in Dhaka and to demonstrate cross-cultural interaction between Bangladesh and the U.S. People Get Ready had been choreographed by Hollander for the European Conference on Tolerance held in Krakow, Poland, in 2003, after he heard a report by NPR’s Juan Williams about the significance of the song: https://www.npr.org/news/specials/march40th/people.html. The joint performance was to have opened the performance; but when it was learned that Ambassador Bernicat would have to attend a state dinner organized by the President of Bangladesh for the President of Indonesia, the performance order was flipped so that she could see SHAKTI: A Return to the Source, which was the main work on the program.

IN-COUNTRY REFLECTIONS

Dance Workshops: Each of the Battery Dance’s 5 teaching artists and Indian guest artist Unnath Hassan Rathnaraju were assigned to teach master classes with groups of 20 – 25 participants.

The dance workshops were divided into the following groupings:

Each workshop follows the parameters Battery Dance employs in all of its Dancing to Connect programs: +/- 20 students, ages 14 and up, comprise each workshop; 20 hours of workshop time is spent in the creation of an original dance work in which the participants generate movement sequences that are shaped by BD teaching artists into finished works of choreography which the participants perform on a large stage with fully professional theatrical conditions alongside performances by Battery Dance from its repertoire.

The unique element of this initiative is in the composition of each workshop group – a mixture of refugees, some of whom are unaccompanied minors, with their German counterparts. Changes were observed in each workshop – German students began to cross the chasm that separates them from refugees, refugees became more at ease in expressing themselves physically and verbally, stories were shared and empathy increased. By the performance day, groups were cheering each other, participants from different backgrounds formed an indivisible ensemble, pride was overflowing. Refugees from conflict zones in Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and elsewhere had made their way to Germany in harrowing conditions, escaping from unimaginable devastation. Seeing them free themselves, at least temporarily, from the grip of their nightmarish past, and their hankering for their families and friends back home, was tremendously moving.

In Frankfurt, five senior students and recent graduates from the prestigious Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst trained under the BD teaching artists, becoming conversant in the Dancing to Connect rubric and assisting our staff in translation and program direction. A Syrian refugee dancer and a former Dancing to Connect participant were similarly trained in Brandenburg; as were two professional hip hop dancers in Magdeburg.

Battery Dance returned for its 3rd consecutive year to cities across Germany with Dancing to Connect for Refugee Integration. Each workshop followed the parameters Battery Dance employs in all of its Dancing to Connect programs: +/- 20 students, ages 14 and up, in each of 19 individual workshops. Twenty hours of practice time were spent in the creation of original dance works comprising movement sequences generated by the participants. The workshops culminated in performances on large stages with fully professional theatrical conditions alongside performances by the Battery Dancers.

The schedule of workshops was based upon the academic calendar of the German Federal States, beginning in Sachsen-Anhalt where Battery Dance returned to Dessau-Roßlau and the surrounding cities of Bitterfeld-Wolfen and Wittenberg for the first time since 2009. Three workshops took place in Dessau with one each in B-W and Wittenberg. With the anticipation of an audience in excess of the capacity of the Marienkirche, an historic church in the center of Dessau-Roßlau that has been converted into a stunning performance venue, two performances were scheduled. City officials and leaders from the Landeschulamt invested great care in organizing the program. Among other things, they arranged for dance flooring to be laid on top of the stone surface of the stage area to ameliorate the hardness. Exceptional hospitality was laid on, with tours of the city and a celebratory reception following the final performance rendering a true sense of partnership. Despite what appeared to be minimal publicity, the Marienkirche was packed with every seat taken and some standing on the sides for the matinee and evening performances.

Next, the Company returned to Brandenburg State, with workshops in Potsdam (2), Rathenow and Oranienberg. The Battery Dancers were supported by 5 teacher trainees, one of whom was a Syrian refugee and professional dancer, who had supported the workshop program in 2017. The students gave their all in the final performance at Schlosstheater Rheinsberg, which was documented on video by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brandenburg. Another separate performance by students from the Steuben Gesamtschule was presented before a full house at the Reithalle of the Hans Otto Theater for a special ceremony honoring innovative programs for refugees across the region.

Responsibility for the 3 programs in Weinheim was handled by the head teacher from the Helen Keller Schule in Weinheim, Alexander Haas, who had done so in 2017 as well. The school provided the necessary spaces for three workshops; and music, theater and social work teachers supported the workshops along with Iraqi refugee Halo Azad (who had been a participant in a Dancing to Connect program in Erbil, Iraq, in 2012!). Simultaneously, a group of refugee students in Mannheim worked with two Battery Dance teaching artists supported by Syrian refugee Saeed Hani acting as a teacher trainee and translator. Saeed has established himself as a professional dancer/choreographer based in Trier and relocated for the duration of the program to Mannheim. His German, Arabic and English skills made him an invaluable support – and learning Battery Dance’s arts education methodology will add to his portfolio of skills for future work.

The finale among the schools in Weinheim and Mannheim took place in a sports hall at Heddesheim since it had proved impossible to source a theater venue in the participating cities. A good crowd showed up to celebrate the achievement of the students, with Halo Azad serving as the master of ceremonies.

Dancing to Connect for Refugee Integration was chosen as the opening event of 2018 American Days in Stuttgart . Christiane Pyka and her staff at the DAZ organized the entire project, beginning with an opening press conference and a meet-and-greet reception for all teachers and local coordinators from the Theaterhaus Stuttgart with the Battery Dance team. Battery’s teaching artists fanned out across the metropolitan region the next day, provided with maps and public transit tickets provided by the City. Workshops reached diverse schools with an age-spread of 14 – 22 years old and various educational levels. The theater was packed full and received a standing ovation from VIPs as well as parents and teachers from the participating schools.

Battery Dance carried out its acclaimed Dancing to Connect program in the South Korean city of Gwangju over nine days in February, 2017. The program was conceived of and supported by the U.S. Embassy Seoul and its local partner, Asia Culture Center, one of Asia’s newest and most well-equipped centers for the arts. This was the Embassy’s first collaboration with ACC and benefited from the meticulous preparation, care and handling that was invested which ensured the successful outcomes that were reached.

The mission of the program was ambitious: applying the American values of inclusion, individual empowerment and freedom of expression to a diverse group ranging from classically trained ballet dancers at one end of the spectrum to wheel-chair bound and cognitively impaired students at the other. The Company worked with North Korean defectors, some of whom had never attended school during their complicated young lives. They also worked with ‘mail-order brides’ from the Philippines. Most striking about the program was the fact that these groups were mixed, pairing abled and disabled, mainstream and NK defectors, South Korea-born with new arrivals. The variety of experiences entwining created something quite special, and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in the packed audience at the Asia Culture Center during the final performance of the program.

One of the side goals of the program was to help the disparate schools and community groups in Gwangju engage with the ACC. In meetings that took place in November, 2016, as a precursor to the program, Senior Cultural Affairs Specialist Eun Kyong Choi and Battery Dance Artistic Director Jonathan Hollander heard from several sources that the ACC was inaccessible to the community. Certainly that was not the case during the week that Dancing to Connect took place; ACC could not have been more generous with the provision of two beautiful dance studios and a state-of-the-art theater, along with thoroughly professional technical staff. The presence of ACC President Mr. Bang Sun-Gyu at the final performance and his adulatory response to the program may be a harbinger for better times to come with regard to community outreach programs by the ACC.

There were make unique aspects of this program. Ms. Choi wisely engaged the support of five Embassy interns, some veterans of previous years, and others finishing out their terms of service. These young people jumped into the program with fervor and impressive language skills. One even translated from Chinese since most of the NK Defectors had lived much of their life in China and had limited Korean (and no English) to draw upon. In that particular group, led by Mira Cook, it was common to hear English, Korean and Chinese being spoken simultaneously during the workshops!

One of the most striking elements of the program was the achievement of the disabled students whose parents were deeply involved in the program, coming every day and sitting through the 4-hour-long workshops. It became apparent that the parents had anticipated a very ‘lite’ experience for their children; certainly not the highly physical, deeply immersive program that Robin conducted. To see students whose mobility appeared to be severely limited, even in pedestrian mode, actually dancing and focusing 150% on complex movement sequences, was truly heart-rending, and the parents were often wiping tears as they watched their children exceed all expectation. A short video clip may be found here.

The night of the final performance followed a day of snow and foul weather, so everyone was concerned about the turnout, despite excellent media attention and signage. The ACC has yet to establish a robust schedule and a loyal fan base and thus the Embassy staff and Battery Dance were trepidatious as to how many bodies would fill the seats and cheer on the students. However, these concerns were unwarranted. The theater was filled to capacity and the opening speech by Chargé d’Affaire's ad interim Marc Knapper was enthusiastically received.

Gwangju Metropolitan Ballet Company’s artistic director, Ms. Shin soon-ju, thrilled with the opportunity her dancers had been given to be stretched in their thinking, technique and mode of movement through the work with Battery Dance’s Sean Scantlebury, expressed her interest in having him return to choreograph a longer work for her dancers in the future. While the Company was in Gwangju, one of the ballet dancers was selected to perform a solo role in Battery Dance’s choreography, proPULSion, and executed it beautifully with only three rehearsals.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, Curtis Chin, a member of Battery Dance’s International Advisory Board and a frequent writer of OpEd pieces in the international news media, flew in to witness the last day of workshops and the performance at the Asia Culture Center. He subsequently posted an article on the importance of cultural diplomacy and cited the Dancing to Connect program as a powerful example. Our third tour to South Korea again proved the continual importance of developing cross cultural understanding: challenging preconceptions, building bridges, empowering one another. Working, collaborating and creating in Gwangju provided impactful experiences for all parties involved.

Battery Dance returned to Sri Lanka, ten years after its last engagement, in order to collaborate with several of the nation’s leading cultural institutions: Chitrasena Dance Company, Dancers’ Guild, Naadro, Royal Nelung Arts Centre and producers of the annual NatFest dance festival, Natanda Dance Festival. Among its many goals, Battery endeavored to break down barriers that exist among the dance community, create opportunities for interaction with dance students and teachers as well as Sri Lankan choreographers and musicians, and share skills in the areas of arts management, lighting and theater production, and conflict resolution.

Strong local connections enabled Battery Dance to engage in the kind of creative interactions that would not have been possible otherwise. Months of prior communications between Artistic Directors of Battery Dance and Dancers’ Guild, Jonathan Hollander and Chandana Wickramasinghe formed a basis for collaboration in the creation of a new work, VILLAGE, that was set on a cast of 12 dancers, six from each company. Four rehearsals took place at Royal Nelung Arts Center and the piece quickly took shape, and was well received in its only performance in the Drums & Dance production at Bishop’s College Auditorium.

Through Chandana, Battery Dance was connected to the Sri Lankan percussion ensemble Naadro, and a second collaboration took place. Entitled ProPULSion, it featured five drummers on stage along with five dancers of Battery Dance and Indian guest artist Unnath H.S.

This trip revealed a notable increase in enthusiasm, among the communities we collaborated with, to explore our form of contemporary dance; the standing ovation following our finale of Drums & Dance was certainly not taken for granted. Sri Lanka was one of our most welcoming hosts and we hope that we will not be waiting another 10 years to return!

Responding to high levels of violence across Honduras, Battery Dance conducted its Dancing To Connect Program with a focus on gender based violence and female empowerment. Battery worked with 75 youth, creating 3 new pieces for 2 public performances at the end of the trip. We were determined to establish sustainability from these workshops too; teaching skills aimed to empower and support the growth of dance and the arts in Honduras. Therefore they were also attended by 4 trainees, and included tech, lighting and grant writing sessions.

This program was timed alongside International Women's Day. What better way to spend the day than bringing the community together to celebrate dance whilst tackling questions about gender based violence. Indeed, March 8th offered the perfect opportunity to showcase the collaboration.

Battery's first venture to Mexico reached a total of 100 youths. Workshops were carried out at 5 Faros across the city. We came to learn that Faro translates to 'Lighthouse', a fitting name for the community cultural centers that hosted us.

During a full week of workshops and rehearsals the students worked with Battery to create 5 brand new pieces of work in the lead up to the Feria Internacional de las Culturas Amigas Festival. The annual festival featured representatives of 89 countries from across the world; a melting pot of cultures for us to premier our new works within.

In the Company’s first visit to Botswana, Battery Dance conducted its award winning Dancing to Connect program with 100 participants in and around Gaborone. Sponsored by the U.S. Embassy Botswana and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the program celebrated Botswana’s 50 years of independence, and the 50-year relationship between the governments of Botswana and the United States.

Battery Dance worked with orphans at Stepping Stone, adults from FNB Bank, professional dancers, and at-risk youth from villages, who created their own choreography, in collaboration with Mophato Dance Theatre, our exceptional local partner. The workshops culminated in a free public performance on Saturday, September 24 with U.S. Ambassador Earl Miller as Chief Guest.

Dancing to Connect Performance Date: Saturday, September 24, 7:00pm

Location: Maitisong Theatre, Maru-a-Pula School, Maru-a-Pula Way, Gaborone, Botswana