Video Slideshow: 'Dynamic Diversity' Back on Battery Dance Festival Stage

Battery Dance Company performs Dolly Sfeir's "Happy to Be Alive With You," a world premier, at the Battery Dance Festival. From left: Amy Saunder, Zaki A'Jani Marshall, Vivake Khamsingsavath, Sarah Housepian and Jillian Linkowski. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The Battery Dance Festival [1] took the stage in Rockefeller Park for seven evenings last week before some of the biggest crowds in its 43 years of eclectic choreography. The city’s longest-running dance festival featured an international array of artists representing 10 countries and a rich smorgasbord of performance styles.

Photographs by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

“I’m not aware of anywhere else in the city where you can find this dynamic diversity of genres, dancers, and communities,” said Jonathan Hollander, founder and artistic director of the Tribeca-based Battery Dance. “This is why I created the festival.”

With Wagner Park, the usual venue, now under reconstruction, the festival was staged at the northern end of Rockefeller Park for the second year. While not offering Wagner Park’s dramatic backdrop of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, the expanse of lawn made for accommodating more people comfortably, Hollander said. Not only did the festival draw some large crowds, but it was an audience that Hollander found to be “completely focused.” 

“All of the international companies commented that they were so thrilled and astonished at how attentive the audience was for a public park performance,” he said. “It really seemed like people came with a desire to take everything in, and didn’t move during the two hours.”

Interest in such a wide variety of programming, he added, “is a wonderful statement about the fact that the community, whether or not they have dance experience—and dance watching experience—can really enjoy it and take it in.”