Archive for the ‘ Inquirer Articles ’ Category

Anne-Marie Mulgrew, D.C.’s Human Landscape at Bride

Author: admin

Jun 2

Posted on Tue, Jun. 1, 2010

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 mise-en-scene. In this case they brought their works to the Painted Bride stage, with some mixed results.


JENNIFER MUELLER
Alexander Short and Amanda Abrams performed in two Human Landscape works “January Night” and “Closet Dances.”


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A new high for New Edge Mix dance artists

Author: admin

May 18

Daily Magazine

Posted on Tue, May. 18, 2010

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 try out works in progress.

Over last weekend’s annual New Edge Mix Performance Series run, Schockley stooped to a new high, helping mop up the floor after Nicole Bindler’s Sand in My Soda Pop, then promptly taking part as an onstage instructor in react/dance’s body/speak.


Steve Maturno
Shannon Murphy and Zachary Svoboda in “An Expectation of Violence” at the Community Education Center.
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Something new for Philadelphia

Author: admin

May 17

Posted on Mon, May. 17, 2010

With more than forty dances notched in Brooklyn-born choreographer Nicolo Fonte’s dancebelt, how is it we’ve not seen one in Philadelphia prior to last Friday night? Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has commissioned six dances by him in as many years and is the third company to perform his 1999 In Hidden Seconds since he made it for Spain’s Compania Nacional de Danza. They gave the work its Philadelphia premiere at the Kimmel’s Perelman Theater over the weekend.

Twenty international companies offer Fonte’s works, and it would be great if Pennsylvania Ballet had several. His work is too important to be unknown to Philadelphia ballet lovers who jumped to their feet at its close.

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Eleone rebuilds ‘Americana Suite’

Author: admin

May 4

KRISTA BONURA
A’aliyah Khan and Okewa Garrett of Eleone Dance Theatre, which used a Pew grant to develop the program.
Posted on Tue, May. 4, 2010

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

Eleone Dance Theatre premiered a wonderful reconstruction of Katherine Dunham’s Americana Suite Saturday afternoon at Freedom Theatre, showing it can perform at a fully professional level, though most of the program did not rise that high.
Eleone, having received a $46,000 grant from the Pew Foundation’s Dance Advance to rebuild parts of Dunham’s revue-style suite, brought in former Dunham dancers Ruby Streate, of the Katherine Dunham Center, and Glory Van Scott to oversee the project.

A “Prologue” got it off on the right foot with a joyful demonstration of Dunham movement: the guys jumping higher than the gals’ heads, the gals rotating their wrists along with their hips, that rib-pumping thing goin’ on, a whole lotta stomping, and shimmying down to their knees.

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A Leap Beyond

Author: admin

May 1

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

Those of us who critique the arts go wild with delight when an artist we’ve been watching for many years creates a work that transcends all he has done before. Thursday night Koresh Dance Company opened its spring season at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre with artistic director Ronen (Roni) Koresh’s Sense of Human, an evening-length piece that I would call his masterwork to date.

The program opened with choreography by Melissa Rector, Koresh’s spitfire star dancer since the beginning, 19 years ago. Rector set her Flight on the Koresh Youth Ensemble, and its 11 young women soared. There were Africanist stompings, grotesque gyrations, and the kind of angsty angularities that contribute to the Koresh “look.”

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Work or W(h)ine?

Author: admin

Apr 29

The Philadelphia Inquirer has just been sold. I may be out of a job soon, but I just did a rum run to Delaware and came home with with a Bordeaux Rose, Chateau de Cornemps, an  Abbyville Fume Blanc from Napa Valley and a Vin Gris de Cigare, from Bonny Doon vineyards, all in the $10-12 range. If you don’t know whether I’ll still be working perhaps you can tell me which of these I should drink first?

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Filed under: Current Events, Dance, Food, Inquirer Articles

GERMAINE ACOGNY

Author: admin

Apr 21

Posted on Thu, Feb. 11, 2010

Exploring African roots and branches

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

‘It’s a dream that has become a reality,” Senegalese choreographer Germaine Acogny said of the creation of Les écailles de la mémoire (“The Scales of Memory”). The work took the United States by storm during a 2008 tour that culminated at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Acogny’s all-male, Senegal-based Compagnie Jant-Bi and Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women danced its visceral Afro-European choreography.

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Philadelphia Dance Projects

Author: admin

Apr 21

JACQUES-JEAN TIZIOU / www.jjtiziou.net
Artists in the Local Dance History Project: (top row, from left) Jano Cohen, William Robinson, Gregory Holt, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Terry Fox; (bottom, from left) Heather Murphy, John Luna, Alie Vidich, Dan Martin, and Michael Biello. Reconstructed works are being performed by today’s dancers in the project’s two weekend programs.
Posted on Tue, Mar. 2, 2010

The old, the new, moving together

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

This year’s installment of Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents opened Friday night with part one of the Local Dance History Project/Next Up series, tracking the city’s dance past into the future – what was, who was, what will be, and who will be dancing it.

In a preshow video at the Performance Garage, Philadelphia Dance Projects executive director Terry Fox said, “It’s important that dancers be remembered as part of the landscape of this city,” and what followed painted small pictures of that landscape.

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International Association of Blacks in Dance

Author: admin

Apr 21

Everybody dance!

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

Although deep into work with the Philadelphia Dance Company and her own dance school, Joan Myers Brown saw a problem that she could not ignore.

Back then, in 1988, Brown also served on the board of Dance/USA (a national service organization based in Washington, D.C.). She noticed that such dance organizations were not interested in audiences of color, and they really did not want modern dance, preferring to focus on major ballet companies.

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Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents

Author: admin

Apr 21

Posted on Mon, Mar. 8, 2010

Dances from the past and the present

By Merilyn Jackson

For The Inquirer

Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents’ second weekend at the Performance Garage provided some unexpected links between dance in the past and the present. The director of the PDP, Terry Fox, once was a key independent choreographer on Philadelphia’s modern dance scene. She showed two of her video “fillers” made with David Rosenberg for WHYY in 1980. In the first, “Pounding the Pavement,” Fox demonstrates a simple set of movements, turning her head right to left, rocking from the ball of the foot to the heel. She is standing at the corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, and it doesn’t seem much like dance until you see nearby pedestrians doing it. Very catchy. Very cheeky. READ FULL STORY

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