The Battery Dance programme at the J N Tata Auditorium by the Battery Dance Company, New York, on April 7, 2001, was in three parts each titled ZERO-TWO-BLUE-HEAVEN SEVEN, MOTHER GOOSE and - post intermission - the Indian inspired LAYAPRIYA.

ZERO was based on the poems of Robert Creeley and the four segments set the scene as it were. But most of the audience was not aware of this since they were not readers of poetry or afficionadoes of Robert Greeley.

MOTHER GOOSE with music by Frank Carlsberg's quintet (although there were only three musicians visible) included Mumbai born vocalist Christine Correa. Mother Goose is an obscure nursery rhyme which many of us are not familiar with.

Post interval and recorded music accompanied the five dancers in ensemble and in solo and duet performances. The first two pieces were played against a background of grand piano and drum set - with the diminutive vocalist in the corner - making it difficult to discern patterns that were made and induced (a curve of the hand held away from the torso also "creates" a space between curved hand and torso that has its own pleasance).

The musical instruments were removed during the intermission to give the performers a clear and uncluttered background to play against, but persistent cross lighting, with little light from the front and no fillers from the top and back, flattened and 2-dimensionalised the staging.

Of the dancing itself? When five or six dancers combine to go through the same set of postures and steps and hand and body movements, they should either be in split second synchronisation or in a phased fluid 'wave' motion. But, when precision is lost, the effect is destroyed.

India is a country of dance: from the fluid to the florid; from the sinuous to the staccato; from the lascivious to the lusty. When six western dancers from America eschew the rich folk and ethnic dancing traditions of their own land, the cowboy and the Cuban; the native American and the African, to present uninspired, mediocre sequences, one is not only appalled but abashed: that visiting cultural ambassadors could be so ignorant of their prospective audience.

The main auditorium at the J N TATA complex is a "fan" arrangement with the stage located at the pivot of the fan. Proscenium arch staging techniques do not hold good in such a geometry and little had been done to address this.

The Battery Dance Company performed under the aegis of The Oberoi Group and locally sponsored by PHILIPS. Bangalore is the high-tech IT city; it is also a very, very sophisticated city - the former dictates the latter. Never forget this.

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