In the summer of 2006, the Battery Dance Company (BDC), featuring 13 dancers from diverse cultural backgrounds, came to Breisach and Freiburg. Over the course of one week, they worked with 100 students from Freiburg schools to create a performance. The resulting choreography was successfully performed at various schools and in Breisach, with the U.S. ambassador in attendance.

BDC returned to Breisach and Freiburg in 2007 and 2017, this time presenting their “Dancing to Connect” programme.

Extract from the Badische Zeitung, 14 July 2017, by Anja Bochtler: Freiburg youth create choreographies with dancers from New York.

“…For its ten-year anniversary, Jonathan Hollander returned to Freiburg with his dancers. The aim, he explains, is always the same: when young people creatively express their struggles, tensions, and emotions, they liberate themselves.
This has been particularly significant for nine young refugees from the international preparatory class at Wentzinger-Realschule, says their teacher, Anna Legeland. They are not yet fluent in German – but here, for once, they are on equal footing with everyone else. Even a shy, psychologically traumatised girl from Afghanistan, who rarely speaks in her daily life, has discovered ways to express herself. Soheila and Evelina, too, hardly need words – they improvise together, always as a team. By Tuesday, these initial explorations will have grown into a full choreography.

Evelina attends Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium and has trained in modern jazz for 12 years. Soheila, a refugee, is dancing for the first time. Similar partnerships are found throughout the group: Edin (11) from Lessingschule has teamed up with Jonathan (14) from Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium. Claudia Haug, a teacher at Lessingschule, is impressed by twoof her Year 71 students, who usually struggle and frequently argue. One has an autism diagnosis, and the other is psychologically traumatised from his experiences as a refugee. Usually, they struggle and often argue – one has been diagnosed with autism, and the other is psychologically traumatised from his experiences as a refugee. Yet here, they have come together as a harmonious duo.”
1 In Germany, Fünftklässler usually corresponds to the first year of secondary school (Gymnasium, Realschule, or Hauptschule), where students are generally 10–11 years old. In British English, this might align more closely with Year 7, which marks the start of secondary education.