Photo credit: Lindsay Browning By Alexi Davenport for The Dance Journal Choreographer and associate professor of dance at the Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance at Temple University, Merián Soto offered a culmination of her seven year work on the Branch Dance Series with the presentation of Somos. Staged in an abandoned parking lot [...]

Renowned choreographer Merián Soto presents the culmination of her 7-year Branch Dance Series with the monumental SoMoS, bridging nature and the urban landscape, in the North Philadelphia barrio on October 12, 2012, as part of Taller Puertorriqueño’s free performance series, Café Under the Stars: Spotlighting the Arts in El Barrio. This large-scale work features three [...]

REVIEW: Philadelphia Dances (Selected works) Arts Bank, June 16, 2012 by Lewis Whittington for The Dance Journal Photos by Bill Hebert The choreographers who presented work in Philadelphia Dances at the Arts Bank, are all dynamic in their own right as experimenters and in their respective commercial entities. The collective’s concert at the Arts Bank, [...]

Merián Soto/Performance Practice announces Wissahickon Reunion,  a one-year cycle of 4 Branch Dance performances  that will take place in Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley Park.  The series, will  consist of four outdoor performances, one each season spanning from  October 2011- June 2012.   The first performance, Fall, will take place at Bluebell Meadow on Sunday October 23 , [...]

Bodies of Text is a series of collaborative dance performances and art exhibitions tied to the book and its interdisciplinary interpretations.   Premiering as a part of the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts and its theme of Paris 1911, Bodies of Text is rooted in the idea of Art à la Rue and brings [...]

Nine local dance artists and organizations receive $929,000 in funding The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance has awarded a total of $929,000 to nine outstanding and adventurous dance projects. The grantees represent four dance companies, two presenting organizations, and three individual artists. Dance Advance director Bill Bissell commented, “This year’s grantees [...]

Photo by Bill Hebert, BH Photos Bowerbird and Ladybird are excited to introduce BLINDSPOT, a festival of music and dance taking place at Philadelphia’s historic Christ Church and Neighborhood House from February 24, 2011 through March 6, 2011.  Highlights of the festival include: seven concerts by world class artists on Christ Church’s pipe organ; choreographed [...]

Local dance/theatre company, idiosynCrazy productions, premieres its newest evening-length venture, FLATLAND 2010, at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts as part of the ByLocal Series.  FLATLAND, directed by choreographer Jumatatu Poe, will be presented on January 15, 2011, at 8pm.  Last seen in the 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in September, idiosynCrazy productions is [...]

Posted By : Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe 28-year-old Jumatatu Poe is ready to be old. “It’s a tactile thing–I want to know what it feels like,” he explains. But growing old doesn’t sound so bad when you think about immortality as much as Jumatatu does. It’s a topic he’s exploring in his new [...]

The 2010 Live Arts Festival brings world-class contemporary dance to Philadelphia while continuing to cultivate the work of the region’s top choreographers.  Visiting artists include the celebrated New York-based choreographer Lucinda Childs, who will present the Philadelphia premiere of her rarely performed signature work DANCE. This seminal collaboration is an exploration of human motion, musical [...]