Review: 40th Annual Battery Dance Festival of NYC

Last week on the 18th of August, I was fortunate to tune in for a night of the 40th Annual Battery Dance Festival. From the comfort of my own couch, I was able to live-stream the free public event as dancers performed outside at the Robert F. Wagner Park in New York City. With themes of connection and accessibility, this particular program featured works performed in wheelchairs, tap shoes, pointe shoes, and the ever-popular, contemporary dance socks. The show kicked off around sunset with the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty making the evening even more special. Even streaming, you could sense the hope and joy of these performers finally getting to take the stage again and the audience’s excitement to see them do so.

The evening started with an NYC Premiere of Od:ssey choreographed by Marc Brew and performed by the Dancing Wheels Company of Cleveland, Ohio, an integrated company of performers both with and without disabilities. Dancing Wheels made their stage debut this year after joining in the virtual festival last year amidst the pandemic. What caught my eye in this work was the mirroring of movement between the performers in the wheelchairs and those that were not; movement ideas of rolling, gliding, and creative partnering connect the performers and show the best version of inclusion I can imagine. I hope to see more work from this company in the future.

The second work of the evening was Donor choreographed by Will Ervin of Erv Works Dance and performed by Zaki Marshall. This contemporary ballet piece used musicality, classical ballet forms, and contemporary qualities to explore loss, grief, and the space around these emotions. The performer executes gestures of pain, reaching out and bending over, while looking lonesome on the stage; his gaze falls over the audience, but does not engage or connect, emphasizing the loneliness of grief and the distance it creates. Marshall’s technical proficiency shines through with his incredible control and elegant lines. Overall, the piece left me wondering what happened and what might come next in this processing of loss. I found myself on the outside longing for more information, but perhaps that is what makes the experience so interesting. 

The evening takes an energetic upturn as Demi Remick & Dancers enters the stage with a World Premiere of Radio Days, an inspired series of vignettes featuring all the best of tap dancing and the music of classic MGM musicals. The choreography emphasizes character, camp, and kitsch as the three performers act out the songs and move with show girl like presence. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this piece is the clever use of humor; the larger-than-life characters are used to poke fun at the exaggeration in a way that makes us all feel like we are in on the joke. A few songs in you may find yourself thinking, “How are they still going?!” A beautiful moment in a section set to “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” brings the energy down and shows a gentleness not often associated with tap dance. The showmanship of this piece left my heart-warmed and toes tapping, absolutely a highlight of the evening. 

Next up was On the Waterfront, a ballet piece choreographed by Morgan McEwen of Mordance as a tribute to the great Leonard Bernstein. Displaying concepts of music visualization, the cast of eight dancers, four on pointe and four not, was split into four couples. The clearly talented and well-trained performers executed the choreography well with great attention to the music, often times performing their duets in unison or canons. At points, I found myself questioning whether all four duets were necessary in this piece with so much unison. Featured moments of solos or single duets caught my eye as did the large cruse ship that coincidentally became the backdrop midway through the performance. The difficulty of working with a film score is matching the drama of an entire movie with so little time for exposition; perhaps what I was missing was the characterization of the performers and seeing what story they might be telling. 

The Battery Dance Company took the stage next to perform The Liminal Year choreographed by former company member, Robin Cantrell. Cantrell wanted to tell the story of NYC during the pandemic and set the work to music by Alexis Gideon. Slightly predictable in structure, the piece begins with a clump of performers on the stage as each dancer breaks apart from the group for a solo moment before rejoining the group just the same. Another section has the performers shifting their weight between their legs and attempting to balance, an accurate depiction of our attempts to find stability throughout the pandemic. The whole piece nicely physicalizes and abstracts the experience of the pandemic through movement. The music shifts tone as a solo with frantic contemporary movement takes place and then grows tense as an intimate duet with classic contact improvisation principles begins. The ending shows a return to the beginning group motif, breaking into solos again, but now finding happy little bounces and starting a new group that is together in the end signifying comfort, levity, and hope after the pandemic.

The last piece of the evening was Honky Tonk Angels, an NYC Premiere set to the music of Patsy Cline and choreographed by William Byram. The enthusiastic performers execute balletic movement with playfulness, camp, and great expression of their characters and relationships. The choreography presents creative partnering, story-telling, and a sense of humor about everything cowboy with a playful sexuality infused in the piece that coincides well with the casual breaking of gender norms. There is not a moment wasted in the piece and it seems Byram can say so much with very little movement. The dancers never drop their presence and performed with energy that was delightfully electric. A wonderful way to the end the evening on a high. 

After the sun had set and the evening had come to a close, I was struck with how remarkable an achievement this dance festival truly was. Sticking to their mission, they safely and successfully brought together so many dancers, choreographers, and dance-lovers to connect with dance once again. With free admission, $1 workshops, and extended access to the live-streamed recordings, the 40th Annual Battery Dance Festival remains dedicated to their mission of connection while also bringing us all hope for these sorts of accessible festivals in the future.