DOWNTOWN DANCE FESTIVAL TURNS TWENTY.Battery Park in lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York. Lower Manhattan is generally defined as the area delineated on the north by Chambers Street, on the west by the Hudson River (North spends most of the year as a jumping-off point Noun 1. jumping-off point - a beginning from which an enterprise is launched; "he uses other people's ideas as a springboard for his own"; "reality provides the jumping-off point for his illusions"; "the point of departure of international comparison cannot be an for tourists en route to the Statue of Liberty Statue of Liberty great symbolic structure in New York harbor. [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 284] See : America Statue of Liberty perhaps the most famous monument to independence. [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 284] See : Freedom . This month, however, the park becomes a springboard for emerging choreographers This is a list of choreographers A
Guiding the festival through to its twentieth year is a feat that the Battery's artistic director. Jonathan Hollander, celebrates as a triumph of dance over the crunch of the almighty dollar Almighty dollar is an idiom often used to satirize an obsession for material wealth (the phrase implies that money is a kind of deity). The phrase is commonly attributed to Washington Irving, who used it in the story "The Creole Village", which was published in the November 1836 . The festival, which is a free public event, has never broken even. "We're basically hamstringing Hamstringing is a method of crippling a person so he or she cannot walk properly, by cutting the tendons in the back of the leg. A victim of this cannot run, or walk fast, once the hamstring tendons have been cut. our company to be involved in public performance," Hollander says. "I'm glad we have a board that supports this. A lot of boards would say, `Get rid of this program. It's too expensive.'" The festival is intended to attract new interest in New York's dance scene. "Anyone who goes to see dance in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of tends to see many of the same faces at different performances," Hollander explains. "So it's been our mission to try to open that up, by exposing public audiences to the widest range of dance available, and then hope that they'll take the cue and realize that this isn't a special language, and it's something that they can enjoy." This year, Battery will present choreographers John Passafiume, Amy Marshall, Isabel Gotzkowsky, Heather Harrington, Chris Ramos (in his third festival appearance), and Donna Scrow Gentile's Freedance Company. Diane Jacobowitz's troupe of young dancers, Kids' Cafe, will appear on the festival's Family Day (Sunday), and Janavak, an ensemble of twenty-five musicians and dancers from Ahmedabad, India, will perform a variety of traditional Indian dances on Sunday and Monday. The Battery Dance Company will also perform on Monday. Battery's managing director, Ron Knoth, helped assemble the roster of performers, many of whom were culled from the 750-odd companies and dancers who rent Battery's studios each year. "It's wonderful to dance outdoors, especially in the summer in New York," Knoth says. "Battery is really proud that we've helped to establish and sustain that type of experience." |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion