Coverage of dance, movement, and related performance art in Philadelphia.
At rehearsal last week putting the finishing touches on his new dance piece ‘Promises I Never Meant to Keep,’ choreographer Roni Koresh was bleary eyed, wondering if the coffee he was drinking was from three days ago, but otherwise thoroughly engaged
View More No regrets in Roni Koresh’s PROMISES
Last fall, Nichole Canuso Dance Company presented The Garden, which wowed its intimate audiences—only six viewers per show—by weaving them deeply into the action of the dance, and outnumbering them two to one.
View More Midway Avenue (Nichole Canuso): An interview with the artist
PHILADANCO!, the city’s premiere modern dance company, had a bit of a problem during its final performance of Blood, Sweat and Dance at the Kimmel Center on Saturday night: the ushers had run out of programs and had to hand out black and white photocopies. In the dance world, however, this is a very good problem to have, and in this case, it was a testament to the company’s continued preservation of predominantly African-American traditions in dance.
View More PHILADANCO can do just about anything
What happens when you combine Philadelphia choreographers with dance makers from across the country, give them less than 10 hours to remix and recreate each other’s works, and ask them to show their creations? We’re about to find out.
The Remix Festival, curated by Annie Wilson and Susan Rethorst, is inspired by Susan’s choreographic technique of wrecking—basically radically taking apart a finished work and reconstituting into a new form—and The Wrecking Project.
View More REMIX FESTIVAL: DANCE REIMAGINED
Marcel Williams Foster turns social media and performance upside down, and spontaneous performance, situational intimacy, and social media are the tools you have to curate your own audience/performer experience.
Using theses and other techniques to activate the audience, theatermaker/scientist Marcel Williams Foster takes us on a self-referential tweeting goose chase. How ‘meta.’
View More #GPSBODIES (Marcel Williams Foster): Tweet the Rainbow
A typical concert dance performance does not usually conjure up thoughts of social justice and governmental reform. At first glance, dance and politics might not seem to go together. That is not to say that the art form is entirely apolitical – different genres of art can certainly serve as a persuasive medium for declaring political statements. From a historical perspective, analysis of the arts can be used to study social change and political reform, and dance is no exception to this.
View More The National Water Dance
Multimedia theater designer Jorge Cousineau is moving abstract objects under the rustic dance studio in the Maas Building in Northern Liberties. Niki Cousineau is rehearsing…
View More ALL THIS HAPPENED, MORE OF LESS (Subcircle): Scenes from a dance marriage
We could be at a yoga studio, or a modern dance class, or even just Whole Foods (which might explain why everyone is so good looking and in such great shape) but the tableau onstage at Drexel’s Mandell Theater is the latest creation of choreographer Kun-Yang Lin. Be/longing: Light/Shadow is a world premiere based on a summer of research in Indonesia.
View More BE/LONGING I: LIGHT/SHADOW (Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers): A review of the world premiere
Have you heard the one about the anorexic dancer who fell off a balcony and landed 14 stories below onto a squooshy flat of doughnuts loaded on top of a car? The fat, cream, sugar and flour she never ate saved her life. What was killing her on the inside was what saved her from the outside. I loved the irony Kathryn Craft set-up in her debut novel, The Art of Falling, by this improbable circumstance.
View More Merilyn Jackson’s Book Review of The Art of Falling
Got a bad case of the Mondays? CardioCreativity dance classes can help beat your work or school day blues. Created by Gabrielle Revlock and Nicole Bindler as a segment of their larger Dance Apocalypse project, these classes transcend the average dance or fitness regiment by allowing participants to unleash their creativity in a performance-based setting while burning calories. The class occurs every Monday through April 7th and appeals to everyone, of all ages, sizes and socioeconomic classes. Even if you’ve never danced in your life, you can still join in and have a good idea of what’s going on during the class.
View More CardioCreativity (Dance Apocalypse): A Not-So-Blue Monday
The much-talked-about BLEED, running this weekend only as the next page in FringeArts’ idiosyncratic year-round programming, opened in New York last year to what seems like universal praise. The dance piece is the culmination of two years of work and three other dance pieces, which O’Connor made, then digested and collapsed into BLEED.
View More BLEED (FringeArts): Tere O’Connor’s dance embraces all
Shut Up & Dance 2014 benefit for MANNA proved one for the books. Every year the performance is typically wonderful for a number of reasons, primary among them its great sense of Philly community spirit in support of MANNA and not the least of which is the esprit of the participating dancers. Some years are standouts artistically and this was just one of those years.
View More A benefit night to remember – Shut Up & Dance 2014
What better way to welcome the coming spring than with flamenco? Flamenco, which means “flame-colored,” is a genre of Spanish folk dance and music traditionally characterized by sensual choreography and bold, complex guitar rhythms. In Philadelphia, dance company Pasión y Arte is bringing the spirit of modern flamenco to the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival, which runs from March 1st through March 16th.
View More Passion and Art in the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival
Article courtesy of Art Attack Philly, in association with Drexel University and the Knight Foundation. See the original article here. In a way, art is always about identity.…
View More ID:3 (HYBRIDGE): The Name of the Beast
Phindie has been a long-term champion of playwright John Rosenberg and his Hella Fresh Theater. There are pretty much no companies in Philadelphia focused on full seasons of original work, certainly none of the caliber reached in Rosenberg’s best plays, 2013′s Hannah and 2012′s Alp d’Huez.
View More A NICE AND FRESH sendoff: John Rosenberg’s last show in Philadelphia
Cotton candy for all, toppling egg cartons and cell phones playing songs by P!nk and Ed Sheeran. Miller Rothlein’s newest work, From the Spot Where We/You/I Stand (Stood), invited the audience directly into the performing space. The invisible wall between viewer and performer was broken; human interaction was foregrounded and the viewer was given an active voice in the work.
View More Egg Cartons, Cotton Candy, and Living Sculpture
Escaping the winter blues with tour stops in Los Angeles earlier this month touring the James Brown Project, Philadanco’s dancers were back at their home studios in Philly last weekend, rehearsing upcoming performances for their spring series here and an ensemble of five women preparing for a ballet to be performed in Verizon Hall onstage with the Philadelphia Orchestra this weekend.
View More Tommie Waheed-Evans unveils Aubade
For several years now, the FringeArts Scratch Night series has been an in-the-know favorite on the Philadelphia performing arts scene. Each Spring and Summer in the lead up to the Fringe Fest, the organization hosts a monthly event to showcase in the works performances by LAB fellow, Fringe favorites, and other local artists.
View More Free Beer. Have I said enough? Scratch Night returns at FringeArts
The Mütter Museum, with its macabre glass cases of organs and bones, makes for an unlikely venue for a dance performance. However, this week only, choreographer Jae Hoon Lim takes on the challenge with his new work and master’s thesis, Life Between.
View More Life Between the Bones: The Mütter Museum presents its first-ever dance performance
Sebastian’s dance-music-theater creations draw from each art without being confined to easy definitions. This Saturday’s Sorry, I’m Just Human marks a culmination of two years of choreographic, musical, and theatrical experimentation.
View More Seven dancers. 200 Surveys. 4-inch Leather Boots. SORRY, I’M JUST HUMAN.