When Dito Van Reigersberg first entered the cube, as the set for the 2010 Live Arts Festival show TAKES has come to be called, he had just stepped off a plane to an early rehearsal in Los Angeles. “I come into this space, watching my image fly around, and I almost ralphed,” Dito says. “We [...]

While we are Renaissance men and women, we aren’t experts on absolutely everything. So we took up with friend of the Festivals (and our former communications manager) Ellery Biddle, who is in fact an expert on Cuban arts and media. We thought…

Do you know our friend Steve Weisz? He’s one of the people in Philadelphia most committed to advancing dance. Steve runs The Dance Journal, an exceptionally comprehensive site for dance news in the city (and which, in the interests of full di…

Growing up in Langhorne, Pennsylvania—”the car dealership capital of the state”—Daniele Strawmyre competed in dance competitions for titles like Miss Dance Pennsylvania. Though she won the “Showstoppers” competition, she was unco…

by Nicholas Gilewicz Megan Mazarick missed the surprise Lucinda Childs performance at the last Susan Hess Modern Dance event in its old space this spring. She was cleaning up from her own dance. “Ben [Asriel] and I did this piece in dirt. We got stuck in the stairwell, spitting dirt into a bucket of water.” [...]

Here at the Festival Blog, we push Philly arts hard. But when we speak with many artists—especially dancers and choreographers, it seems—money always comes up. I’d bet we spend about a quarter of the time interviewing artists disc…

For choreographer Eun Jung Choi, whose work will be featured in 8 (eight choreographers / eight new works) in the 2010 Live Arts Festival, visiting the in-laws means travelling to Mexico–her husband, dancer/choreographer Guillermo Ortega Ta…

“To be satisfied with everything I do.”
“To feel, look like, and have a million bucks.”
“To have sex with 50 Cent.”

These are just some of the responses scrawled on the notecards that Olive Prince hands out to friends, family, and even peop…

There are some people who make friends wherever they go, and I get the sense that Shavon Norris, one of the eight choreographers presenting new work in the upcoming Live Arts show 8 (eight choreographers / eight new works), is one of them….

We’ve all heard how the Susan Hess Modern Dance studio had its final performance the other week, and it was reported on much like a final farewell. And it is, but only to that Sansom Street studio space.

Still, after fostering contemporary d…