The Battery Dance Festival is New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival. Now held at Wagner Park in Manhattan’s Financial District, it’s stage backdrop of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty is one of the world’s most stunning dance stages.
Battery Dance Festival curators have a truly unique global practice and perspective. The Battery Dance Festival has been an outdoor public dance festival in New York City since 1976. Those were some good times and some bad times. Battery Dance Festival Forever!
39th Battery Dance Festival 2020
The 39th Battery Dance Festival is on YouTube daily from August 14-22, 2020. Free. Performance links will be posted on the day of the show at batterydance.org
Performance videos will be available for 10 days after the show.
The venue change is to keep New Yorkers safe during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Each day of the festival has a curated theme. The year’s festival presents work from 19 countries in 52 shows. A traditional mind might think that only a little of this is Latin, but a critical thinker understands that all of this is Latin heritage because we are the great mix of humanity. Our roots reach everywhere around the world. No matter your heritage, you will see yourself in the Battery Dance Festival.
“We Are One.” It can’t be said any more clearly than that.
Black Voices in Dance
Friday, August 14 ~ African American culture is African through the Caribbean and Congo Square (Place Congo) in New Orleans.
Indian Independence Day
Saturday, August 15 ~ The West Indies have a South Asian heritage from the time after abolition. Trinidad has a South Asian, Indo-Trinidadian plurality. Spanish flamenco has Indian roots. You can see it in flamenco’s fiery hand movements and hear it in the flamenco cry.
And how about Kamala Harris! This is going to be a very special and proud day.
Middle East
Sunday, August 16 ~ There is a large Lebanese diaspora in Brazil and Colombia.
Spain has the heritage of three great civilizations. Two are familiar. They are Roman and Renaissance civilizations. But there was a third that is not properly taught in the United States.
Islamic Spain was an equal peak of civilization with tremendous scientific development. Jewish poets who wrote in Arabic for Spanish Islamic sultans recovered classical Greco-Roman ideas from the great libraries of Islam. So Middle Eastern culture is a mostly unspoken, but important part of our European heritage.
Europe & Japan
Monday, August 17 ~ The Americas have a European colonial past. Brazil and Peru have strong Japanese heritage communities.
Ana Maria Lucaciu & Razvan Stoian represent Romania with the world premiere of “Almost.” Romanians claim a Latin heritage and it’s true. Romans mined huge amounts of gold from what is now Romania. Hence the country’s name.
Ludivine Large-Bessette represents France with “Drop Out Bodies.”
Odos Productions represents Greece, Switzerland and France with the U.S. premiere of “Anasa.” Roman culture is Greco-Roman culture absorbed from Greeks living in Southern Italy. There are Greeks in Greece who call themselves Romanos.
Women’s Right to Vote Centennial
Tuesday, August 18 ~ Like Sojourner Truth famously said, “Ain’t I a Woman?” Voting women have perhaps the most important role today in leading our country through the current period of messy decolonization. Now we have to make sure that everybody votes.
Each one, teach one. Register yourself, then teach another how to register themselves. Pass it on.
And don’t forget to take the Census too. Don’t be afraid. The census counts all people living in the U.S., not only citizens. It’s illegal for authorities to use or even see your census information and confirmed by the Supreme Court. The census affects how many representatives we have in Congress, and how much federal money we receive for the next ten years. You count. ¡Presente!
Africa
Wednesday, August 19 ~ Latin culture is very African through the Caribbean and Brazil, but even in many places in Latin America you wouldn’t think have that heritage. The culture is so strong that our African heritage is even celebrated by Latin Americans who are not recently African.
African culture is the root of most American popular culture. So no matter your heritage, if you are an American of the United States, African culture is part of us.
North America
Thursday, August 20 ~ White supremacists like to draw the border along the Rio Grande, but North America runs from the Arctic to the Darien Gap in Panama. Indigenous Americans are not directly Latin, but we mixed with the colonizers and the Africans they brought. That brings us into the Latin family.
Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations represents the United States with “Seed ~ In Protection of Mother Earth.”
Dancing Wheels represents the Disability community in the United States.
Delfos Danza represents Mexico with the U.S. broadcast premiere of “Telempathies.”
Kaeja D’Dance represents Indigenous Canada with the U.S. premiere of “XTOD.”
Battery Dance
Friday, August 21 ~ The wonderful dance company behind the festival has its day.
Tribute to NYC
Saturday, August 22 ~ This is for the people of the capital of the world.
The festival is also hosting daily $1 Classes by festival company artists. There is a Vogue workshop by Lebanese dancer Hoedy Saad. Vogueing came out of Harlem and El Barrio East Harlem’s LGBT communities.
Check the full Battery Dance Festival schedule at batterydance.org
Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations represents the United States with “Seed ~ In Protection of Mother Earth.”
This company’s dance photo is beautiful and powerful. It represents woman as the mother of civilization which rose when she began to plant seeds instead of only harvesting wild ones.
She is standing with her legs open, but covered in a respectable way. The pose represents the fertility of woman and Mother Earth herself. The brown shade of her tunic represents the soil and her arm wrap represents life growing out of the dirt.
We are not taught to think of it this way, but Mother Earth herself must be alive for she gives birth life in so many profound ways. In other representations she is Pachamama, Yemayá or the Virgin Mary. She also represents Africa, mother of humanity.
Indigenous peoples have a symbiotic relationship with Mother Earth. If you kill the people, you kill the land. And if you kill the land, you kill the people. Indigenous peoples are guardians of the land and should be respected and treasured.
Dance may be the silent art, but there is so much said here without any words.
In a way the image represents the Battery Dance Festival in its role seeding the global future of dance. ¡Bravo!