Philly Dance Fest Offers An Impressive Line Up

Philly Dance Fest is a new festival this year offering a one day showcase featuring a unique selection of area dance companies and inspiring artists, exposing audiences to Philadelphia’s vibrant dance and performing arts community. This year’s festival will take place all day on Saturday, October 6th at the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center at 601 N. Lansdowne Avenue in Drexel Hill.

The lineup of artists is very impressive for a new festival looking to establish itself in an already highly competitive market. The Festival’s mission is to provide veteran and newly-established choreographers and dance companies, in the Greater Philadelphia Region, an opportunity to present their work in a professional venue in order to experiment, develop, and refine their repertories, and to build audiences without the burden of self-producing.

Tickets range between $12.50 to $18.00 with discounts for students and seniors. All seating is general admission and advanced tickets may be purchased on line at www.PhillyDanceFest.com or at the theater box office the day of performance. More information maybe obtained from the web site or by calling 610-394-9182 (Option #2).

A dozen modern dance companies will be featured along with new dance works by contemporary choreographers. Amongst the presenting companies are Miro Dance Theater (Amanda Miller and Tobin Rothlein), which creates original work that explores the collaborative intersections of contemporary dance, video, and visual art. Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Co, which is the only Philadelphia troupe to appear twice at the prestigious FIDA Festival, Toronto, Canada. Fusing modern dance, theater, music, technology and art, the company charms, provokes and informs audiences of all ages with its insightful and wacky views of the world. Una Sera di Danza will feature new works by three of the areas independent choreographers – Kate Jordan, Melissa Caterina Chisena and Tara Lynne Madsen.

Several graduates of the University of The Arts, who have since established their own dance companies, will also be highlighted. Philadelphia-based dancer and choreographer, Molly Root will bring to the festival Anomoly of the Heart. John Luna and Kinetic Outlaws offer a vignette entitled The Living Room – four people, a television, and a sofa. The inescapable consequence of waiting.

The festival will open with a performance by React/dance (co-directed by Jacelyn Biondo and Kristen Shahverdian), which seeks to diminish the boundaries between audience and performer, giving the audience more control over their experience.

Music & Motion Dance of Drexel Hill is the only youth/teen-based performance dance company in the festival. They will be concluding their 2007 season with the final performance of RED, after a successful run at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.

Recently established companies on the Philadelphia dance scene, which have gained in notoriety, will be highlighted as well – Danse4Nia Repertory Ensemble, Alchemy Dance Company, and Vada Dance Collective. Look for Vada’s ardent mix of technical precision, dazzling physicality and an innovative yet classic style resonates with audiences, and makes each performance a true experience.

A compete line up of dance companies and performance times can be found on line at www.PhillyDanceFest.com as well as below…

At 1:30PM (two companies presenting)

REACT/Dance
Imaginary Ordinary
Imaginary Ordinary is a work set on five dancers. Originally shown as a works-in-progress at the In Flux Performance Series, this piece was chosen for completion and invited for performance in the final In Flux Performance Series in May 2007. Moderator Curt Haworth, describes Imaginary Ordinary as “an old time debutante party gone wild. It was a wonderful mix of worlds that took us on a fun, obsessive and passionate theatrical ride.” In this evening length premier, react/dance will delve into the back-story of the unique characters and will uncover the events leading up to climactic finish.

Danse4Nia Repertory Ensemble
Wanting To Make A Social Change
Danse4Nia Repertory Ensemble uses the power of dance and spoken word to explore our communities social ills that plague us today. All the while celebrating the positive solutions that can come from making a social change. This show high lights the famed phrase, “it starts with you, it starts with me!”

At 3:00PM (two companies presenting)

Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Co
Dances for Everyday Objects
Float, Crash and Fall
Created for six dancers and six huge inflated balls, this dance examines the interplay between an object and a person. Dancers roll, float, crash, collide, caress, squeeze, toss and interact with the props creating powerful images that reflect basic human desires. The balls are a movable set that at times are connected to the dancers’ bodies creating a sense of space where time is suspended, allowing for multiple interpretations i.e. planetary, nature and fantasy worlds. As choreographer, I became fascinated by the colors, shapes, textures and qualities of the object and how they informed the movement vocabulary and transported me to other imaginative places.

John Luna & Kinetic Outlaws
Living Room
Four people, a television, and a sofa. The inescapable consequence of waiting.

At 4:30 pm (three companies presenting)

ROOTEDancEnsemble
Anomoly of the Heart
Anomaly of the Heart is a repeated duet combining care and frustration creating subtle dysfunction. Accompanied by the soft, yet striking music of Arvo Part, three duets take you on a journey of discovery, sorrow, contemplation, and reality. Through repeating ideas and switching character roles Anomaly progresses by revealing three different honest, beautiful looks at relationships that are both sincere, yet innately flawed.

Alchemy Dance Company
Preconceived Motions
As we move through life, we all develop beliefs, ideas, and experiences which we draw upon to form our opinions, make decisions, and handle situations. Often, without realizing it, we jump to conclusions based on these preconceived thoughts and fail to see clearly, fail to remain open, fail to try new things thus closing ourselves off from one another and the world around us. Preconceived Motions brings to light the judgments we make based on appearance, sound, and movement and looks at where these “motions” come from and whether we will let them continue to rule us. Alchemy teams up with b-boys of Philly’s Illadelph Phlave for an exciting combination of ballet, modern, and breakin’ techniques in a performance that promises to captivate, entertain, and inspire.

Vada Dance Collective
Nightgardening
Vada’s Nightgardening blends abstracted images, emotions and sensations capturing the connection that exists between us and the night. The fervent pictures we create and cultivate in and out of our dreams and the fine line between, and the discoveries they burgeon into inspire this rich collection of works by choreographers Rebecca Herrmann Moyer and Katie Skettino.

At 6:30 pm

Music & Motion Dance
RED
Your eye is caught by a single color, RED. It is inescapable and compelling as senses are triggered and emotions aroused. When this color becomes the defining point of a relationship, one is caught up in whirlwind of seduction, passion, anger, romance and joy. Ultimately this color journey leads us to an empowering view of who we are and what is truly possible. Music and Motion Dance’s new work RED, offers us an intimate look at relationships through the medium of movement, luscious visual imagery, differing human temperaments and undeniable beauty of self-discovery.

At 8:00 pm

Kate Jordan, Melissa Caterina Chisena, Tara Lynne Madsen
Una Sera di Danza
Dance works by Three Independent Choreographers

Kate Jordan
Una Sera di Danza: Premier of an evocative, dynamically charged solo featuring Philadelphia-based dancer Lindsay Delooze.

Melissa Caterina Chisena
Una Sera di Danza: Wonderfully fierce dancing in collaboration with original music fuse together to create a brilliant union between the dancer and the instruments.

Tara Lynne Madsen
Una Sera di Danza: Tara will be presenting two new solo works performed by Josh Knowlton (NYC Based Dancer) and Tara Madsen. Original music created by Peter Jones will accompany both pieces.

At 9:00 pm

Miro Dance Theatre
Lie To Me and shorter stories
Artistic directors Amanda Miller and Tobin Rothlein collaborate with Frankfurt choreographer Antony Rizzi to create a whirling array of narcoleptics, pyromaniacs, and paper dolls that weave video art, ballet and modern dance into a magic-realism performance that explores the lies we tell each other, the lies we tell ourselves, and the lies we love to be told. Inspired by Franz Kafka’s writings, motifs from classical ballets, and stories of geographical displacement, this work combines the choreography of Amanda Miller and experimental media of Tobin Rothlein with Antony Rizzi’s unique blend of theater, video and dance, shaped in part by his twenty years working in Germany with choreographer William Forsythe.

BOX OFFICE, INFORMATION & TICKETS

Information and about the festival and presenting artists is available online at http://www.phillydancefest.com or by calling 610-394-9182 select Option #2

Advanced tickets may be purchased online for all shows at http://www.phillydancefest.com – all major credit cards accepted.

Tickets can be purchased the day of the show in the theater lobby starting at 11:00 am. All seating is General Admission. Discounts offered for seniors, students and UDPAC members.

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