Battery Dance
presents
A Virtual Performance
of

The 39th Annual Battery Dance Festival

Night One: BLACK VOICES IN DANCE

August 14, 2020

https://batterydance.org/battery-dance-festival/

This night’s performances explore the nexus of African and Caribbean dance traditions with the Black experience in America.

In “Crossroads”, the KOFAGO DANCE ENSEMBLE salutes the spirit deity Eshu, the Caribbean guardian of the crossroads. Trinidadian and Haitian blend as the dancers in diaphanous white follow the throbbing rhythm to its conclusion. A beautiful viewing experience.

Cut to the ERV WORKS DANCE “I-will I-will I-WILLLLL”. WILLIAM ERVIN’s choreography moves him from modern dance to smooth jazz in a remix of “Here Comes the Sun”. Outdoors, dancing in gravel, he moves into ballet poses and graceful extensions to express one’s relationship to the self.

The beautiful and athletic “greener grASsEs”, an ensemble work, uses lighting changes and multiple dance and music styles to evoke the death journey of migration and spiritual wreckage of leaving loved ones behind.

“What do you want to shed?” Your masks? The coverings you have donned to protect yourself from yourself? “tenderheaded..” works to unravel our layers against the “music” of garbled radio-station tuning. Dance company Co.D has excelled in this presentation.

-Karen D’Onofrio-