San Francisco-based LEVYdance returns to Philadelphia with the local premiere of ROMP, an immersive experience where audience and performers inhabit the stage together, raising the stakes for live performance and creating a welcoming environment that is charged with possibility. Their last appearance in Philadelphia was in 2008 with Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents.

Artistic Director Benjamin Levy creates a new relationship between audience and performer that heightens and activates the role of the viewer.  ROMP seats dancers and audience members together at banquet tables, providing a familiar setting for everyday interactions to transform, creating an increasingly surreal and hyper expressive world.  Whether playful and exuberant or emotionally raw, this world unites audience and performer together in the experience.  LEVYdance’s signature partnering and dynamic physicality are witnessed at close range, amplifying the intimate connections inherent in Levy’s work.  Students from the Temple University Dance Department join the company in these performances of ROMP to create a cast of twelve.

About the Artist:

LEVYdance Artistic Director Benjamin Levy has been awarded the honors of “Top 25 Choreographers to Watch in 2004″ by Dance Magazine and a Goldie Award by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Levy’s choreography has been presented at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, Zellerbach Playhouse, ODC Theater, The Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Cowell Theater, Dance Place, Joyce SoHo, and internationally at VDU University in Kaunas, Lithuania and the Internationale Tanzmesse Festival in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has taught master classes and been in residence at the Juilliard School, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet BFA and Training Programs, the University of Utah, University of California Santa Barbara, SUNY Purchase, San Jose State University, University of California Berkeley,  George Washington University, and DeSales University. Levy has also been commissioned to create new work for companies including Scottish Dance Theatre and Santa Barbara Dance Theater.

Philadelphia Dance Projects partners with Temple University’s Boyer College of Music & Dance

For 2012, Philadelphia Dance Projects (PDP) has expanded its relationship with Temple University. The two will partner to host a Guest artist in residency with San Francisco based Choreographer Benjamin Levy, February 5 through 10. Levy will teach technique classes and dance students will be selected to perform repertory as part of the company’s presentation of a new work  “ROMP.” This partnership is providing not only access to contemporary dance for the TU community and the public at large, but it aims to create opportunities for student interaction with creative artists and to deepen engagement with the next generation of dancers and dance concert-goers.

PDP presents Levy Dance – Romp
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 7:30pm
Conwell Dance Theater, NE Corner, Broad & Montgomery Sts., Philadelphia
Tickets available on Dance Box Office

Photo credit:  David DeSilva