Slupsk had been the site of Battery’s first Polish performance in 1996, and we harbored fond memories of the standing ovation and rhythmic applause that had greeted a performance only 20 hours after our arrival at Teatr Impresaryjny.

Joanna Kubacka, the Deputy Director of the Teatr Impresaryjny, is a powerhouse organizer and very creative and ambitious in her programming. She took care of all arrangements for our stay in Slupsk, had our meals preordered at a very good restaurant near the theater and arranged for our accommodations in rooms recently renovated in a building adjacent to the theater itself.

The stage in Slupsk was a little small (in width) for our production, but we managed to shoe-horn the choreography into the space. As for the audience, it was overflowing the theater and gave us as enthusiastic response as we had enjoyed in 1996. This time, the press coverage was extensive and rapturous (there had been no press follow-up in the previous engagement.)

When Battery Dance Company traveled to Warsaw as part of their Poland tour in 2000. After a performance disaster in Warsaw that had happened several years prior- BDC decided to take all the necessarily precautions on this trip.

BDC had arranged to give two performances at the Teatr Maly, our Warsaw host in 1996 -- a ticketed show for the general public, and the a free concert for children. Six weeks prior to the tour, the Teatr Maly received a directive to close on the weekend that we were engaged to perform. (The Corpus Christi religious holiday and the end of the school year coincided and many people were given leave at this time.) Also, the Maly was faced with a 40% rent hike and the future of the theater was in jeopardy. The Maly’s Director, was able to broker an arrangement with the Teatr na Woli to produce Battery’s shows instead. Subsequently, BDC was unable to find anyone to take charge of inviting youth centers and orphanages to participate in the children’s show – so that plan was cancelled. (Elzbieta Grygiel of the Stefan Batory Foundation had originally offered to help – but in actuality, was “too busy”.) Upon arriving at the theater, 3 days prior to the performance, we discovered that there was no BDC signage in the display cases outside the theater and that only two tickets had been sold. We had already learned that the Boris Eifman St. Petersburg Ballet and the Warsaw Jazz Festival would be playing back to back with us, and to make matters worse, many citizens of Warsaw had taken advantage of the holiday on Thursday to take a long weekend. The Theater Manager and Public Relations Director of the Teatr na Woli met with us a few hours after our arrival from New York. In a harrowing three-hour session, their attitude was so hostile and defensive (despite the presence of Malgorzata Koszelew, Cultural Program Officer from the U.S. Embassy; and Pawel Pniewski, our Polish Technical and Logistical Director) that we had serious doubts as to whether the performance could go forward. Indicative of their attitude, the Theater was unwilling to rent a concert quality piano despite conditions they had agreed upon specified in our tech rider. Malgorzata offered the possibility of borrowing the piano from the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, boosting our morale and chances of a successful performance. The technical crew of the theater couldn’t have been more accommodating, generous and welcoming in contrast to the administration. \

2000 Continued:

SO… We asked our media rep, Justyna Golinska, to redouble her efforts in contacting the press. Her work resulted in prominent photo placements in the main newspapers, and an audience of 175 (with the theater closed down to its chamber size, this constituted a full house.) The Company danced beautifully and we received the unexpected compliments of the Theater Manager at the end, which we accepted with alacrity.

Battery’s was the only performance of the 40 presented by Festival Feta that was staged indoors. In rainy cold Gdansk, this was the only way and the Festival organizers didn’t want to risk the possibility of cancelling Battery’s performance for several reasons. We were the only American group participating; the first dance company ever presented by the Festival; and were billed as a headline act. Given the fact that the preponderance of the Festival events were of an extremely avant-garde style in a very large scale (ie. Acrobats suspended over the market square by hot air balloon, tight-rope walkers, actors on stilts, etc.) we worried that our show would appear too tame and conservative to the huge and mostly young audience.

In this respect, our worries were unfounded: we enjoyed numerous curtain calls and “bravo’s” from an overflow audience. It was a heartening experience in every way. We had a superb guide called our “pilot” who was totally invested in making us comfortable and supported. We were put up in a first class hotel and shuttled around the city by taxi. Last minute requests for rehearsal space for our dancers and musicians were fielded successfully. One of the most incredible, touching events of Battery’s history took place here: when we made our initial tour of the theater, we spied some beautiful, natural canvas or linen fabric draperies hung as borders and drops in the enormous space. We assumed they were for some opera or theater production. However, we were informed that they were made especially for us!

Our elation was slightly tempered when we found out that our tech schedule would be interrupted for four hours during the day of the performance while the resident theater company held a previously unannounced rehearsal on stage.
Tributes also go to our dancers, who performed that night without having rehearsed previously in the lighting cues (they were being loaded into the lighting board as they rehearsed.) The show was one of our best despite the shaky preparation process, in large part because of the commodious stage, but even more of a factor was the electricity emanating from the enormous audience.

This project by Batter Dance Company was instigated by Hanna Strzmiecka, a choreographer and leader of the dance community in Lublin.

Finding that the available theaters in Lublin offered stage dimensions inadequate for BDC, she proposed to the local branch of Polish Television that they host a public performance by BDC in their studio while creating a video recording for future broadcast. The studio accommodates an audience of approximately 100. The television people took responsibility for organizing hotel accommodations and meals for the Company and agreed to handle local transportation.

However, they failed to meet us at the train station and we were left to our own devises for the first ½ day in which we were in Lublin (They later reimbursed us for our meals and cab fares, and began their patronage in earnest on the second day of our stay.) However, it wasn’t until the actual day of taping that certain issues were resolved. Worried about the interference of a live audience and interested in taping several run-throughs rather than a single performance, the station cancelled its earlier plans to have a live audience. Because they had waited so long to begin production details such as lighting, laying a dance floor, organizing the rehearsal and taping schedule, and because we discovered that the production team were unaccustomed to recording dance, we ended up deciding in favor of recording only Zero…Two…Blue…Heaven…Seven, our newest work and the one that involved live music. To complete a 30 minute program (the dance work is only 18 minutes in length), the t.v. people expressed an interest in interviewing the collaborative team of choreographer (Jonathan Hollander) and Frank Carlberg, composer/pianist. They were very excited about the results and have proposed creating a similar production of “Layapriya”

While in Lublin, we were able to rehearse at Hanna’s studio, and to meet with her and her protégé, the young choreographer Tomasz Siwek. We also visited the Teatr NN in the Brama Grodzka where we met the directors Witold Dabrowski and Tomasz Pietrasiewicz whose work on the Memory Project was deeply impressive.

Battery's performance at the Kraków 2000 was a wonderful surprise. We were greeted by a standing-room-only crowd including Cesar Beltran, our host from the American Embassy in Warsaw, Mark Toner, Bronia, Tim and others from the Consulate in Kraków.

There were many dancers and theater students in the audience as well. The full audience was a surprise because it had been depressingly apparent that the administration of the Kraków 2000 Festival had done everything possible to sabotage the Dance Festival. They had not published any brochures or leaflets advertising the Festival -- a fact which stood out baldly in contrast to the other components of the 2000 event (ie.The Jewish Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Street Theater Festival) all of which were lavishly and extensively marketed. We had been told that Philippe Saire, a well-known choreographer from Switzerland, whose company opened the festival, had performed for 37 people! BDC assumed that they owe the large audience to a natural build over the course of the Festival swelled for us by those who responded to the invitation to our performance and a reception issued by the American Embassy. The stage was very small at the Theater School, PWST, but the lighting equipment, piano and sound were excellent, and the setting was very comfortable for the audience.

The location just outside the center of Kraków was a tremendous improvement over the location where we performed in 1996 - the Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury - where some of the other dance companies were scheduled to perform this season. The Theater school appears to be a good partner for the Silesian Dance Theater in future. The Director and Administrator were both very cordial and welcoming. Our accommodations in Kraków, put together at the last minute by Roman Kusnierz, Managing Director of the Silesian Dance Theatre, were wonderful -- particularly for the five of us who stayed at the apartments of the Jagellonian University in the old center of Kraków.

Battery Dance was presented in three concerts at the MU Theatre in Budapest, Gerzson Peter Kovacs, Artistic Director. The Company presented a mixed-bill, comprising 6 songs from the Songs of Tagore production, Moonbeam, and Layapriya. The Tagore songs were performed with live musical accompaniment by vocalist Sharmila Roy, a world-renowned Bengali singer and her regular tabla accompanist John Boswell of the U.K.

Two of the performances, on Saturday and Sunday evenings, were marketed to the MU Theatre's substantial dance subscriber list and the general public via advertisements and listings in Budapest's arts & events magazines and daily newspapers.

The performances were sold-out and the audiences were noticeable for their multi-generational character. Rhythmic clapping at the end of the program attested to the audience's enthusiastic response to the work. A write up by Dr. Gedeon Dienes, dean of Hungarian dance writers, was further indication of the Company's reception.

The third concert, presented on Monday evening and followed by a reception, was arranged with the support of the American Embassy and Citibank. The audience was extremely international and included Ambassadors and diplomats representing the U.S., Mexico, Portugal, India, Hungary, the U.K. and Finland. The American Ambassador, gave an impassioned introduction prior to the performance, and hosted the reception afterwards.

Battery Dance Company sought out opportunities to teach young people in schools and local dancers in Budapest to take place during its residency. Though this type of activity is not common in the region, we found a partner in Adrienn Szabo and her non-profit, non-governmental organization called The Workshop Foundation, based at the Trafo Center for the Arts. Adrienn set up a three-day workshop entitled "Yoga For Dancers", taught by Battery's Katherine McGowan, which was attended by a 12 dancers from Budapest's active dance scene. Having never before set up dance programs in public schools, Adrienn had a difficult time establishing the contacts and organizing Battery's lecture-demonstrations. However, she managed to set up programs at a public middle school, a public high school and the American International School. We learned afterwards that this was the first time any contemporary dance company (including locally based ones) have ever brought their programs into Hungarian schools.

The Varna Festival was the last engagement in a tour that also included two festivals in Slovenia: Lent Festival in Maribor and Krizanke Festival in Ljubljana; and the European Cultural Month Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Claire Pannell, BDC Company Manager, and Barry Steele, Production Designer (and man of all trades) led the tour, with critical assistance from our dancer Tadej Brdnik, a native of Slovenia, who was able to serve as translator on a linguistic and cultural level (and who also helped us obtain the Slovenian engagements.)

The opera house in Varna (see picture on the right) was visually beautiful but presented some serious problems. The stage was rickety and wooden with big hand-winding contraptions underneath to move sections of the stage up and down. In the minds of the crew, they had flattened the stage in preparation for our performance by making all the wooden floors match up to some extent. However, the large gaps between sections were not safely dealt with by the thin linoleum that had been laid across the stage (without gaffers tape to hold it down.)

A technique came into play that we have since used elsewhere (see Baku, Azerbaijan, 2008). Large cardboard boxes were flattened to bridge the gaps and then the linoleum was restored and taped into place. This solution was not ideal and the dancers had to navigate carefully during their performance so as not to catch a toe or lose a balance.

We have fond memories of Maria, our translator, who was outstanding in every way. She became an integral part of our group, and we remain grateful to this day.