On the Battery Dance Festival stage, a performance choreographed by Luke Biddinger as part of the festival's Young Voices in Dance program. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Last week, the Battery Dance Festival returned to Battery Park City with its biggest program yet. Over seven evenings, 43 companies from six countries performed from a stage at the north end of Rockefeller Park. The audience was treated to a sweeping array of choreographic and cultural offerings. Now in its 42nd year, the series is the city’s longest-running public dance festival.
Video and Photographs: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib. Solo and duet performers, dance companies and choreographers: Katherine Crockett, Samanvita Kasthuri, Amarnath Ghosh, Olivia Wang/Mateo Vidals. Battery Dance, Trainor Dance, NU-World Contemporary Danse Theatre, Dareon Blowe, Teodora Velescu and Lari Giorgescu, Citadel + Compagnie, Dances by Isadora, SOLE Defined, Lori Belilove/The Isadora Duncan Dance Company, Rudrakshya Foundation, Firmansyah Muh Rezha/Batara Gowa, Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, Christine Dakin, Antonio Fini, Reuel Rogers, Valeria Chiapetta/Willem Sadler, IMGE Dance, Luke Biddinger, Jennifer Muller/The Works.
“It just gets better because the audience swells,” Battery Dance founder and artistic director Jonathan Hollander told the crowd, gathered on blankets and chairs on the park lawn.
Missing this year was the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor, the setting of past festivals in Wagner Park, now closed for flood-protecting reconstruction. Still, Hollander noted in a post-festival phone interview, the audience was far larger. “People loved the venue,” he said.
The festival, managed and emceed this year by Amy Santos, is particularly distinguished by its inclusion of a classical Indian dance performance (coinciding with India Independence Day on Aug. 15), alongside “a huge variety of genres back to back with each other,” Hollander said.
Though international in scope, the Battery Dance Festival is an annual reminder that the language of dance is universal. “That’s the thing about dance,” Hollander noted. “Not a word needs to be said.”