The Hindu : New Delhi News : Cultural ambassadors come calling from New York

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Thursday, Oct 19, 2006
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Cultural ambassadors come calling from New York

Staff Reporter

Battery dancers celebrate 30th anniversary

NEW DELHI: It is billed as New York's foremost cultural ambassador. Battery Dance Company -- which has produced a hundred dance works so far, choreographed by its founder Jonathan Hollander in collaboration with a diverse array of composers and designers -- and its cast of dancers celebrated its 30th anniversary at Kamini Auditorium here over the weekend.

Over the years the Battery Dance Company has created a fertile ground for contemporary experimentation and collaboration by creative artists in India and the United States.

Through its arts-in-education programmes, Battery dancers also serve as teaching artists in primary, middle and high schools throughout the five boroughs.

The company also facilitates in-school performances and master classes by international visiting artists, providing first-hand introductions for many city school children to the cultures of the world.

Hollander had organised the first U.S. tour by the Jhaveri Sisters Manipuri Dance Company, a UNESCO-recognised ensemble that had previously performed in 40 countries. He has coordinated programmes at venues like the Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian Institution where the Jhaveri Sisters brought their artistry to the Out-of-Doors Festival. Residencies at colleges and universities across North America brought students, scholars and the general public their first taste of the exquisite and rare Manipuri forms of music and dance.

Hollander has introduced American audiences to C. V. Chandrasekhar, a renaissance man who later received India's highest award from the National Sangeet Natak Akademi. A choreographer, dancer and composer trained by Rukmini Devi Arundale at Kalakshetra in Chennai, Chandrasekhar and his troupe of 12 dancers and musicians performed at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, Baird Auditorium in Washington, Irvine-Barclay Theatre in California and in eight other cities across the U.S.

Maintaining responsibility for bringing India's dancers to the U.S. for over a decade, Hollander recently presented danseuse Mallika Sarabhai on the Battery Dance Company's 29th anniversary season at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. A year earlier, he had arranged for the New York premiere of the Sangeet Natak Award-winning dancer Swapnasundari and her ensemble of Kuchipudi dancers to perform at Battery Dance's Downtown Dance Festival.

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