Festival of Delights at Battery Dance; Review

Jonathan Hollander began Day 2 of Battery Dance Festival by reminding the audience why he created this platform 36 years ago: “Access to the arts for all”. That includes bringing marvelous dancers from across the globe to NYC to create a dynamic cultural exchange. As shown by opening night, it’s a wonderful mission that is incredibly difficult to pull off. Fortunately Sunday had more going for it than not. For instance: Hollander’s ever-welcome remarks, the gorgeous ”Ode to the Moon” solo of high jumps and innumerable turns by Sri Lanka’s Danuka Ariyawansa – which looked like a loose form of ballet mixed with African undulations, and the “girl with a flower in her hair” sequence from Battery Dance Company’s Reconstruction. Watching its dancers comfort and play with each other in that goofily tender section put me in mind of my parents romancing one another as I protested too much without daring to leave the kitchen because I loved seeing them remember why they fell in love. Monday continued with even more wonderful feelings.

In FJK Dance’s Echoes, Fadi J. Khoury unleashed nonstop spirals throughout his body in tandem with creamy épaulement as he shattered the notion of “who is the beautiful one”. It’s usually some ballerina. Here, it was Khoury and he was all the more “manly” for it as he led a bevy of strutting peacocks in a display of unabashed virility.

His partner, Sevin Ceviker, entered halfway through to play what is best described as the Turkish version of Nikiya, dispatching blazing arabesque balances and startling turns that swept to the floor, with supernatural ease. The motif of echoing and mirroring while clear was less interesting to me than the notion of seeing Khoury choreograph a full transcription of La Bayadere. Het Nationale Ballet should reach out to him to do precisely that.

Lashing legs, cloud grazing extensions, and a cool intensity that smoldered at low burn without ever reaching climax. Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea de República Dominicana’s low chill performance of Michael Foley’s Yo, desparezco was like a frosted glass of wine that is dry to the point of ennui; the more you drink, the thirstier you become. The issue was not the fabulous dancers; it was their staid suite of dances set to classical arts songs with movement that didn’t dare stray past “you’ve seen this before”. Trezon Dancy, a wonderful mountain of a dancer, suffered similar pangs of “this again?” in a calm solo rife with nebulous struggle that never truly coalesced. Clement Mensah’s choreography for SLK Ballet threatened to repeat this pattern before climaxing in a sudden canon of leaps that transformed the troupe’s nine dancers from prancing doe into Amazons on the prowl.

Showing the music even in silence, Issac Owens and Sean Hatch began Mari Meade’s Dialogue with a percussive pas de deux that resembled sparring with a soundtrack of beat-boxing. Once the music turned on we got a dueling Kathak instead as this conversation expanded into a showpiece with the addition of Or Reitman that featured the men fighting, supporting, falling asleep upon, and turning to and from each other. The only faux pas was when Meade had the men deploy “conventional” dance jumps not in their purview. Meade’s corps of women joined to convert the stage into a dance club of dance-offs. Even as new patterns and couplings evolved, Dialogue remained fabulously all about its men. How sad then that the work that followed, from Cía. Elías Aguirre, crashed the party with a repetitive mood piece of ambling back and forth across the stage. Pez Esfinge wasn’t exactly buzzkill - its intense performances felt like watching someone else’s acid trip - but it definitely overstayed its welcome.

And then there was Nadine Bommer’s American Cinema, a hilarious world of nude marionettes taking in a night at the movies. Bommer’s work is all comedic narrative told through her physics-defying signature technique. The central story follows Maor Shiry Zuriel as a male marionette enjoying a date with his girlfriend, played by Sammy Roth. Meanwhile Gaya Bommer-Yemeni’s love-starved marionette kept intruding into the romances of others to uproarious effect, especially when she shamelessly and repeatedly threw herself at the obviously not-into-girls male couple played by Delphina Parenti and Jamison Goodnight. Finally she settled for eating her feelings with a tub of popcorn. This dangerously funny bout of lucid storytelling kept me convulsing with giggles like a child, much like the children in the audience and their parents who delivered joyful applause that seemed to beg for more. The entire cast was excellent though I reserve special praise for Zuriel, a long serving Principal with the company, for convincing me that she was really a man.

This is what Battery Dance Festival is all about: discovering diamonds in the dance world while building community. None of this would be possible without the support of longtime lead sponsor American Express, hospitality sponsor Holiday Inn Manhattan-Financial District – which houses all of the visiting artists free of charge, the seemingly ubiquitous supporter Councilmember Margaret Chin, festival curator Natalie Mesa, or the State Department which helped secure visas for the numerous artists visiting from across the world- no small feat in this current political climate. It takes a village, and Jonathan Hollander is our mayor.

Battery Dance Festival continues through August 18th, 2017 at Robert Wagner Jr. Park in Battery Park City with a special closing night performance on August 19th, 2017 at The Schimmel Center at Pace University. Tickets to the performances in Battery Park City are free though one should arrive early to stake out a spot as prime spaces go quickly. For more information, or tickets to the closing night performance and reception, visit:

batterydance.org/battery-dance-festival