Polish Artist Brings Cross-Cultural Influences to Battery Dance

Battery Dance Company’s Mira Cook and Sean Scantlebury observe as choreographer Jacek Luminski demonstrates a move in his new work that will be performed this month. Photo by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

When Battery Dance Company takes the stage at 3LD Art + Technology on May 21 to 23, the roots of the performance may go unseen. But they run deep in the psyche of the company’s guest choreographer, Jacek Luminski, one of Poland’s foremost names in modern dance.

Luminski, who is not Jewish, immersed himself in the vanquished Jewish culture of his country. He read books, interviewed survivors and klezmer musicians, and ob­served Hasidic wedding and prayer rituals in the U.S. 

“I wanted to un­der­stand the character [of the people], I want­ed to understand everything from the roots before I asked the questions about dance,” he said in an interview between rehearsals at Battery Dance’s Broadway studio.

“Jacek allowed his body and mind to be influenced by what he learned and he melded it into his own highly distinctive oeuvre,” said Jonathan Hollander, Bat­tery Dance’s founder and artistic director, who commissioned Luminski to create a new work with his dancers.

Hollander, who has frequently worked with Luminski in the two choreographers’ respective countries, will reprise his own 2005 piece “Shell Games” in this month’s concert.

At a recent rehearsal, Luminski led Battery dancers Carmen Nicole, Clement Men­sah, Robin Cantrell, Sean Scantle­bury and Mira Cook through bending and swaying motions that could easily be seen as a physical abstraction of ultra­Orthodox Jews in prayer.

Luminski points to other movements in his choreography that are similarly inspired by Hasidic tradition, such as the animated role of the fingers and palms he observed in ecstatic wedding dances.

The choreographer, a former member of the State Jewish Theater in Warsaw and founder of the Silesian Dance Thea­ter, said he is fascinated by the cross-cultural influences he continues to observe. He sees remnants of vanished Jewish life in Polish music, dance and food (“going to my grandmother’s for the holidays I would eat gefilte fish”) as well as surviving aspects of Polish culture that live on among Jews far from his country.

“You know, it was ten centuries that these nations lived together,” he said.

Performances are May 21, 22 and 23 at 3LD Art+Technology, 80 Green­wich St. Tickets: $20, $15, students and seniors. Information at bat­terydance.org.