Step by step: Using dance to foster India-US ties

“You can take me out of India but how can you take India out of me?” laughs internationally acclaimed choreographer and founder of the Battery Dance Company (BDC) of New York, Jonathan Hollander, whose troupe has been to Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Lucknow, Hassan, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

The current BDC piece Shakti: A Return To The Source - which is performing could well allude to Hollander's own journeys, which brought him to India in 1968, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2006, 2018, and now, in 2020. “It is like the three strands of music, India and dance have beautifully braided themselves inside me and run through.”

Hollander remembers how a culture editor at The New York Times was dismissive of Indian dance. “Now, more and more Indian dance performances are cited among the top 10 dance performances of the year by top dance critics,” he beams and adds, “I'd like to think I've contributed to that in my own small way.”

The BDC has invited Indian dancers like Swapna Sundari, Rama Vaidyanathan, Arjun Misra, Mallika Sarabhai, Shashidharan Nair, and CV Chandrasekhar, among others, to its annual dance festival in New York and Hollander's collaborations with Indian dancers, musicians and costume designers brings to his work a uniquely Indian flavour.

For the current tour, his ensemble includes the young Bharatanatyam exponent Unnath Hassan Rathnaraju, who joins the BDC troupe in a piece set, to Pt Rajan-Sajan Mishra's 'Raga Durga' and Darren Sangita's music.

Hollander is delivering a talk on – Deconstructing The Art Of Choreography at Goregaon's Natanam Studio which will be followed by a documentary, Moving Stories, about six dancers from the BDC who travel the world, working with youth who have experienced war, poverty, prejudice, sexual exploitation and severe trauma as refugees, will be screened at The American School of Bombay.