CARRIED AWAY (Brian Sanders’ JUNK): 2016 Fringe review 47

Photo by Steve Belkowitz
Photo by Steve Belkowitz

Bridging the gap between dance and physical theater, Junk has long since been a Philadelphia Fringe favorite and this year’s world premiere CARRIED AWAY delivers an exciting, heartfelt, and stimulating crowd-pleaser. Inspired by the provocative art of Tom of Finland and Robert Mapplethorpe, CARRIED AWAY is part-acrobatics, part-dance, and part-narrative as Junk founder Brian Sanders’ created a semi-autobiographical piece that reflects on living with HIV over the last 30 years.

CARRIED AWAY features a toe-tapping playlist with music by The B-52’s, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, Donna Summer, and Freddie Mercury.  Performers Matthew Emig, Theodore Fatscher, Julia Higdon, Tommy Schimmel, Kelly Trevlyn, and William Robinson demonstrate incredible skill, agility, and passion in this 50-minute evening length work.  Most choreographers have a chair dance in their repertoire, CARRIED AWAY has that (an over-the-top chair dance, that is!) as well as a treadmill dance, a monkey bars dance, and a little something extra (wink wink). With what could’ve been a heavy message, CARRIED AWAY is more a celebration of life and a dedication to the many who were lost to AIDS in the latter part of the twentieth century.  

[JUNK, 2040 Christian Street] September 9-24, 2016; fringearts.com/carried-away.

Scenic elements designed and constructed by Pedro Silva. Apparatuses designed and constructed by John Howell IV and Brian Sanders.

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