Kishin Shinoyama Photograph As a co-presentation with the Institute of Contemporary Art and International House Philly, Live Arts has organized a film series to showcase the work of Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass. The films provide insight into the creative processes, careers, and lives of these two influential artists. The series is being offered as [...]

By Merilyn Jackson For The Inquirer No matter how great the choreography, without the right dancers to breathe life into it, a dance can go flat as a souffle when the oven door is opened too soon. No worries at the Wilma Theater Wednesday night when BalletX opened its summer run. All 10 of the [...]

By Merilyn Jackson, For The Inquirer In the Philadelphia/Washington D.C. Exchange concert over the weekend, Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Company joined with D.C.’s Human Landscape Dance, each presenting two works representative of their companies. Both have a reputation for working in site-specific arenas, each well-known for using parks, walls, even city sidewalks to create a [...]

By Merilyn Jackson For The Inquirer After 30 years at 2030 Sansom St., Susan Hess Modern Dance Studios presented its final concert there Sunday night. But instead of a wake, it was a celebration of the far-reaching dance legacy shaped in that space. Former Philly dancer Steve Krieckhaus came in from St. Louis to honor [...]

By Merilyn Jackson For The Inquirer Before funders bowed to political pressure in the 1980s, they allowed grantees full artistic expression. You still see funder-driven work in the theater realm. But Terri Shockley, executive director of the 25-year-old Community Education Center, has valiantly given Philadelphia’s dance artists a safe place to take non-funded risks and [...]

By Ellen Dunkel For The Inquirer Inspiration can come from the least likely sources. For Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, it happened on a plane, via an in-flight entertainment program. “Greensleeves” from John Gay’s 1728 Beggar’s Opera was playing in his ears as two flight attendants demonstrated safety regulations. And he saw dance. “I thought it [...]

by Ellen Gerdes for The Dance Journal “Vested Souls” performed at the Community Education Center this past weekend as a culmination of Nora Gibson’s New Edge residency offered both articulate movement and message.  The work coupled pedestrian movement with ballet vocabulary in highly specific, structural choreography.  Gibson believes that the communication of her work to [...]

By Merilyn Jackson,  For The Inquirer Once in a while a dance leaves you breathless the instant it begins. That happened Friday night at the Community Education Center (CEC) with dancer/choreographer Nora Gibson’s work for four dancers, Vested Souls. From the first sweep of Michael Reiley McDermott’s electronic score to the last sweep of Eiren [...]

By Ellen Dunkel for the Inquirer Avatar has been a smash, breaking new technological ground (as well as box office records). Avatard, on the other hand, is more retro, revisiting a time of clunky video games. A modern dance created last year by Philadelphia-based dancer-choreographer Megan Mazarick and performed Friday night at Temple’s Conwell Dance [...]

By Merilyn Jackson for the Inquirer. Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers opened their second engagement at the Painted Bride Thursday night, once again to a sellout crowd. Not surprising as this small company, in just a few years since its move from New York, is at the pinnacle of Philadelphia’s outstanding dance community. The program, called Autumn Skin: [...]