By Stephan Salisbury
Inquirer Culture Writer‘If anyone wants to refer to me as czar,” said Gary Steuer, gesturing toward one of his flaking office walls, “they can look at the peeling paint.”
The city’s new arts czar chuckled in a hearty, if mildly wistful, way.
Just six weeks into his job in the newly constituted and robustly labeled Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, Steuer maintains a sense of humor in the face of metastasizing challenges.
You could say he thought he knew what he was getting into when he accepted Mayor Nutter’s offer to resuscitate an office that Mayor John Street killed in a 2004 round of budget-cutting.
But that was July. What did anyone know in July? READ MORE…
Founder & Editor at The Dance Journal
While not a dancer himself, Weisz’s love for the arts and dance started as a child growing up in New York City. With parents, who were strong supporters of the arts and part of a community with an incredible array of notable artists in music, dance, theater, and fine arts, Weisz’s access and affinity for the performing arts took root. Upon attending college in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-’70s, Weisz started performing as a puppeteer, magician, juggler, and fire eater as a means of supplementing his income. This soon grew into what became Rainbow Promotions Inc., one of the largest entertainment and special events producers in the region. It was here that he began to promote and book dance for major events throughout the city. Many of the dancers he worked within the early days of his company are now major choreographers in Philadelphia. At the same time, Weisz’s interest in computers and the early developments of what is now known as the Internet led him to also start another company, Delaware Valley On Line, which became one of the first regional ISPs. It was this combination of event production, internet development, and event marketing that led him to examine the use of the internet as a means to promote the arts. Dance continued to be a major interest for Weisz and in 2005 he founded PhiladelphiaDANCE.org as a major online resource to promote dance in the city. It was soon after that the Dance Journal was also founded as a way to provide an outlet for writing on a range of topics that encompass the ever-growing and emerging dance community in the region. Weisz continues to run both the non-profit PhiladelphiaDANCE and The Dance Journal on purely a voluntary basis with no income derived from any of his projects. He is also the Director of Graffito Works, an international platform for dancers and performing artists in Europe that creates site specific. More recently, Weisz has expanded his creative endeavors into the realm of photography through the establishment of ArtImagined.photo.
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