Battery Dance 41st Annual Battery Dance Festival

Battery Dance celebrates the 41st Anniversary of its free summer festival from August 13-20, 2022, in partnership with Battery Park City Authority. The 41st Annual Battery Dance Festival will feature in-person and live-streamed performances staged at Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City, New York City at 7PM ET from August 13-19. A closing night event and VIP reception will be held August 20, 2022, at 6PM at The Schimmel Center. Reaching both local and international audiences, the Festival promotes Battery Dance’s mission of connecting the world through dance. For more information, visit batterydance.org/battery-dance-festival/.

Battery Dance Festival, New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival, was established by Battery Dance as the Downtown Dance Festival in 1982. Pre-pandemic, it drew audiences of approximately 2,000 people each night in its iconic setting. The Festival went virtual in 2020, attracting 30,000 viewers across 206 countries. In 2021, it ran as a hybrid model with over 10,000 in-person and over 21,000 virtual audience members. This year, the Festival returns to welcome in-person and livestreamed audiences.

“When Super Storm Sandy flooded lower Manhattan eight years ago, Battery Park City Authority reached out a helping hand, providing a beautiful site for the Battery Dance Festival which we’ve all enjoyed every summer since 2013. With the prospect of rising seas in future, BPCA is enacting a pro-active resiliency plan, lifting Wagner Park up to 12 feet, making it inaccessible this summer. But fear not! BPCA has invited us to move to Rockefeller Park this summer where we’ll benefit from the large lawn and river-front views, as we bask in the glow of performances by local and international companies.” – Jonathan Hollander, President and Artistic Director of Battery Dance

Local Companies

Alison Chase/Performance, Tsu-Ku-Tsu
“Tsu-Ku-Tsu” explores the balance and order of a regal procession giving way to full-throttle pandemonium of tumbling, leaps, and rebounds. Set to a reverberating original score from famed taiko drummer Leonard Eto, the warrior rhythms echo as bodies combine and lock into striking sculptural shapes. 

Ballet Inc., Touche, - World Premiere
Set to Debussy and Brahms, “Touche” is a contemporary ballet that investigates the idea of the female and male emotive response to difficult decisions.

Ballet Nepantla, Let Down and Huasteca Suite
“Let Down” is the story of a lost love that confronts gender normative dancing, while providing representation for queer females in dance. “Huasteca Suite” is an excerpt of Ballet Nepantla’s “Valentina.”

Battery Dance, Hoffman Dances
“Hofmann Dances," is a trio of new dance works inspired by Hans Hofmann, one of the 20th century’s most influential painters and teachers. Guest choreographers Saeed Hani, Tsai Hsi Hung, and Christopher "Unpezverde” Núñez explore Hofmann’s poetic imagery, groundbreaking painting techniques and use of brilliant color. Together their three works embody Hofmann’s legacy of imagination and abstract expression. 

Buglisi Dance Theatre, Threads
“Threads” takes inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as narrated by people from all over the world, beginning with Eleanor Roosevelt. Buglisi’s newest exploration also includes indigenous voices that expose the traumatic unraveling of our society. These human stories create intimately woven threads that make up the fabric of life.

Christina Carminucci, The Solidarity Series IV: Free Spirits Suite – World Premiere
Accompanied by a live jazz band, the fifth original work of the Solidarity Series, is dedicated to presenting tap dance and jazz music together. 

Daeyana Moss, Relinquished Minds
“Relinquished Minds” explores what was taken away from dancers and artists during the pandemic. The choreographer sees the pandemic as a chess game: every decision matters and even the wisest decision may have a negative impact. No matter what, one must never give up.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Face What’s Facing You!
Choreographed by company dancer Claude Alexander III, the piece is an honest, soul-stirring work addressing the facing of life’s challenges.

Dancing Wheels Company, Imagine, If You Will…
Inspired by the current social and political climate in the United States filtered through the lens of those with disabilities, David Dorfman says of his work, “I often marvel at how much we as ‘able bodied’ dancers take for granted and at the same time, how much we as Americans take for granted.” Set to music by Liz de Lise, Omar Souleyman, and Wovenhand, Dorfman has attempted to let the audience imagine a life of differing physical or emotional abilities.

Demi Remick & Dancers, Sweet Nothings
“Sweet Nothings” is a tap dance work energized by genuine affection for the ones we love, illustrated with profound reverence for the masters of the dance form. In this work, the most nostalgic recollections are romanticized with help from the vintage melodies of the Golden Era. 

Floyd McLean Jr., Cold - NYC Premiere
“Cold” explores the importance of holding one another up in a world that seems like it has its cards stacked against you. The individuals in this duet are revisiting earth from another realm, navigating prejudice, hate crimes, and so much more due to how you look or identify.

Gaudanse, nanibu - NYC Premiere 
“nanibu” investigates what it means to be royalty through imagery and movement. The choreography uses bird-like movement along with the feelings attached to colors to create the idea of a queen. 

i KADA Contemporary Dance Company, Unfolding
Choreographer Ae-Soon Kim’s cultural roots and life journey on three continents weave together the people, places and things encountered to compose the soul. 

LaneCoArts, Swerve
“Swerve” explores society’s deviating, swerving away from the foundational principles of nature. Society in conflict is manifested first in social upheaval followed by environmental unraveling.

Ntrinsik Movement, Kindred Spirit
“Kindred Spirit” is an excerpt of a multi-disciplinary production entitled “House of Love” that reflects our culture and heritage. The dancers pay homage to the ones that came before us and celebrate the cultural rhythms instilled deep within our souls. 

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, Just Above the Surface
Created as part of a residency program commissioned by Western Michigan University, this piece explores the electric connection of human interaction—the sensations that pull people together or apart. Conceptually rooted in Yin Yue’s FoCo technique, which fuses movement from both Chinese folk and contemporary dance, the work communicates non-traditional narratives atop a buzzing and complex musical undercurrent by Michel Banabila, Shifted, Machinefabriek, and Metamorphoses. 

Tati Nuñez, Touch - Returned - World Premiere
“Touch - Returned” explores how physical touch can create both an internal and external presence in space around you, exposing both vulnerability and humility as the dancers experience one another. 

The Vanaver Caravan, Vanaver Caravan Retrospective
In celebration of The Vanaver Caravan’s 50th anniversary, the troupe’s dancers and musicians present excerpts from their legacy of innovative world dance and music, a percussive tapestry of pieces from their renowned repertoire inspired by American, Irish, African, French Canadian, and Balkan traditions.

Tina Croll + Company, Balkan Bacchanal
“Balkan Bacchanal” explores the intricate rhythms and moods found in the music from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Romania. The dances are often rituals that range in mood from wild and playful, slow and stately, harsh and driven to gentle and almost trance-like. 

Xing Dance Theater, Citizen
“Citizen” interrogates the labels we receive – foreigner, immigrant, gay, white, black, Asian, poor, old, young. Standing on the stage, after the dancers share their stories and expose their inner selves, what labels do you actually see?

International Companies

AWA, As You Want, Luxembourg - U.S. Premiere
A duet created by Baptiste Hilbert and Catarina Barbosa as a reminder that all human beings come from the same place, although individual life experiences make each of us different characters.

Compagnie Virginie Brunelle, Les Corps Avalés, Canada - U.S. Premiere
A living fresco of today’s society amalgamating beauty and ugliness as they rub shoulders, “Les Corps Avalés” depicts these tired women and men who are sucked into a socio-political chaos, their arms hanging down in tears. 

Dos Proposiciones Dance Theatre, Pacto de Fuga, Spain – U.S. Premiere
“Pacto de fuga” is the answer to the choreographer’s concern for exploring the coexistence between contemporary dance and urban landscape. The creation process was based on the three dancers’ research and immersion in a concrete public venue: a popular traditional square in Seville, Spain.

Fairul Zahid & Lasalle Dance Singapore, Allocentric, Singapore – World Premiere
Hailing from Kuala Lumpur and now based in Singapore, award-winning choreographer Fairul Zahid explores the hierarchy of multiple social identities with music by Òlafur Arnalds & Nils, with a cast of six dancers from LASALLE Dance Singapore.

Julienne Doko, Lost Memories, Norway – U.S. Premiere
The Greek myth of Sisyphus is reinterpreted through Gbaya, the choreographer/dancer’s native Central African culture and language. She invites us to see and feel the connectivity between different arts and cultural backgrounds.

TeaTime Company, Stick-Stok, Netherlands – U.S. Premiere
“Stick-Stok” reveals the human desire for constant discovery and the tumbling effects this brings about . No matter how much we want time to pause, the technological era we live in continues to rapidly change and tumble. 

ABOUT BATTERY DANCE
Battery Dance created its outdoor festival in 1982 as a way of engaging with its home community of lower Manhattan where it had been based since its founding in 1976. As one of America’s leading cultural ambassadors, Battery Dance connects the world through dance. The Company pursues artistic excellence and social relevance by creating vibrant new works, performing on the world’s stages, presenting dance in public spaces, serving the field of dance and teaching people of all ages with special attention to the disadvantaged and areas of conflict. Battery Dance is committed to enhancing the cultural vibrancy of its home community in New York City, extending programming throughout the U.S., and building bridges worldwide through international cultural exchange with programs in 70 countries to date. www.batterydance.org

SUPPORT FOR THE 2022 BATTERY DANCE FESTIVAL
Battery Park City Authority is Battery Dance’s partner in presenting the annual Battery Dance Festival. Public Funds have been contributed by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; and New York City Councilmember Christopher Marte’s Office. Generous support has been provided by Goldman Sachs, Downtown Alliance, Dutch Culture USA, State Bank of India, Consulate General of India in New York, Romanian Cultural Institute, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, DesignBridge, Weill Cornell Medicine and many individual donors.