PHILADELPHIA DANCE PROJECTS
DANCE UP CLOSE
“The informance format works wonderfully in a pandemic,” one audience member commented,
and judging from favorable feedback from audience and press, this opinion is shared by others.
Through our series PDP has been able to bolster those working in dance and provide interesting and inspiring content for audiences through lively and deep conversation.
“Zoom Informances” will continue March - April 2021 with a diverse and inspiring array of Local, National and International Choreographers, Performers and Screendance-makers.
Join us for conversation and real time interaction
FREE or pay what you will
RSVP for zoom link: info
philadanceprojects [dot] org
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21 at 7PM Keeping and Sharing Philly Cultural History A beginning of a discussion with people beginning that work.
MICHAEL
BIELLO & DAN MARTIN,
Creative collaborators in music, performance and visual arts and
LGBTQ cultural activists
MEGAN
BRIDGE, Dance Artist/Writer and Co-founder/director of Fidget
PETER
PRICE, Musician/Composer and Co-founder/director of Fidget
ARTHUR
SABATINI, Performance Arts Writer/Scholar
Dancers circa 1979 in front of the Painted Bride on South Street:
Manfred Fischbeck, Brigitta Herrmann, Jano Cohen, Wendy Hammarstrom, Terry Fox, Ishmael Houston-Jones
How can an artist share their history and legacy? A book?
A film? A website? Digitize?
Catalog? Archive? Exhibit?
The recent passing of Philadelphia dance icon, Manfred
Fischbeck, reminds us once again how will our performance community and the
arts community in general here in Philly be recorded.
Who is keeping this history? And where? How will it be relevant to the future?
A local people will gather for a PDP Informance conversation
around how they are approaching this subject. They will share examples of
projects in various formats and stages of collection that they are currently
engaging in, to a keep a history.
The notable participants Michael
Biello, Dan Martin, Megan Bridge, Peter Price and Arthur Sabatini will join
PDP Director Terry Fox for a conversation with the Informance audience. The
discussion will open from these micro efforts to a larger discussion about the
need for a centralized permanent hub for Philadelphia’s cultural history. How,
where and what modes of archiving are best to engage audience in the present?
Michael Biello and Dan Martin will show some of their
evolving online memoir, Michael
& Dan’s Amazing Queer Songbook, which weaves together short musical
films, words, and images to tell their unique story of collaboration &
love.
Arthur
Sabatini recently retired Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the School of Humanities,
Arts, Cultural Studies at Arizona State University, has returned to
Philadelphia where he is currently collecting and re-editing his writing for a
collection on artists, including Lee Breuer, John Cage, Robert Ashley, Fred Ho,
Armand Schwerner, Annson Kenney and others. He will discuss his most recent
project, working on a book documenting and marking the work and life of
Philadelphia Artist, Performer and Writer of the 70’s, Annson Kenney.
Megan Bridge, dancer,
choreographer, producer, and writer based in Philadelphia, is working with her
life partner and artistic collaborator musician/composer Peter Price on an archive of Group Motion, with whom both of them performed. They are co-founders of Fidget - an organization that facilitates the creation
and performance of their own works and of others. as well as stimulate
discussions around the arts. Peter
Price will share his experience with the archive of electronic music composer
Bruce Haack.
Philadelphia Dance Projects has
initiated two digital collections
The Local Dance History Project (2010) and the Old City Arts History Project
(2019) to share a history largely undocumented at present in which dance and performance
artists played an integral role, in a particular moment in Philadelphia in the
last half of the 20th century. Links to these projects-in-progress
are posted on PDP’s website. Continuing these precedents an Informance session
focusing on history was included in the Fall series, and the April 21
Informance will be the finale to the engaging and eclectic Spring PDP
Informance series. Tying in with the Fidget programming reinforces our
commitment to include Dance History in our ongoing programming.
MORE
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:
Michael Biello and Dan Martin are life-partners, creative collaborators, and
LGBTQ cultural activists. Their 40+ year body of work includes Performance Art,
Dance, Musical Theatre, Film and Visual Art. Biello & Martin’s musical Marry Harry premiered Off-Broadway in
2017 and a soundstage musical film version was released in 2020. Additional
musicals include In My Body (2016), The Cousins Grimm (2009), and Breathe (1997). Their evolving online
memoir, Michael & Dan’s Amazing Queer
Songbook, weaves together short musical films, words, and images to tell
their unique story of collaboration & love. Biello & Martin are
longtime members of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop and the Dramatists
Guild. https://biellomartin.com/musical-theater/
Arthur J. Sabatini began his career as a writer in Philadelphia,
teaching at Drexel, University of the Arts and later worked with Relache, The
Yellow Springs Institute and other groups. He was a founding member of
the Interdisciplinary program Arizona State University, has published work
and taught courses focused on performance, avant-garde studies, aesthetic
research and epistemology and. He lives in Philadelphia and is currently
collecting and re-editing his writing for a collection on artists, including
Lee Breuer, John Cage, Robert Ashley, Fred Ho, Armand Schwerner, Annson Kenney
and others. Sabatini has also written for theater, installations and
performance; and performed in collaboration with William Duckworth and Nora
Farrell’s new media productions, Cathedral and iOrpheus projects.
(PhD/NYU Performance Studies)
Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the School of Humanities, Arts,
Cultural Studies at Arizona State University, has published work and taught
courses focused on performance, avant-garde studies, aesthetic research and
epistemology and. He lives in Philadelphia and is currently collecting and
re-editing his writing for a collection on artists, including Lee Breuer, John
Cage, Robert Ashley, Fred Ho, Armand Schwerner, Annson Kenney and others. Sabatini
has also written for theater, installations and performance; and performed in
collaboration with William Duckworth and Nora Farrell’s new media
productions, Cathedral and iOrpheus projects.
Megan Bridge is a dancer, choreographer,
producer, and scholar based in Philadelphia. Bridge is a contirbutor to thINKingDANCE.net,
and ahahs written for in Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, Movement Research’s
Critical Correspondence, and The Dance Chronicle, Studies in Dance and the
Related Arts. She has served as adjunct faculty in Dance Department at Temple
University, Franklin and Marshall College, Haverford College, Arizona State
University, and West Chester University.
On tour, Bridge’s work has been
performed in New York, Vienna, Berlin, Bogotá, Plovdiv, Dresden, Dusseldorf,
Warsaw, Kraków, Lublin, Bytom, Poznań, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Phoenix,
Johannesburg, and Zurich. In 2013 she was named “Best of Philly” for stage performance
by Philadelphia Magazine.She has been awarded residencies at Spread Art in
Detroit, Stary Browar in Poznań, Poland, West Chester University, Arizona State
University, and with Walking Gusto Productions in Jonannesburg, South Africa.
She has received two Fellowships in the Arts from the Independence Foundation
(in 2006 and 2014), a New Edge Residency and is the recipient of a “Rocky”
(Philadelphia’s dance award).She has an MFA in Dance at Temple and a BFA in
dance from SUNY Purchase. www.thefidget.org
Join in the conversation.
email PDP to RSVP and get the link: infophiladanceprojects [dot] org
Sonic Devices 2007 M. Fischbeck
IN MEMORIAM:
PDP acknowledges with deep sorrow the passing of Manfred Fischbeck,
renaissance artist, mentor and influencer.
He will be greatly missed by our community.
PDP continues to need and welcome your support. THANK YOU.
PDP gratefully acknowledges support from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Henrietta Tower Wurts Memorial, Vanguard Matching Gift Program Foundation, Covid-19 Arts Aid PHL, many Individual Donors and community partner Philadanco and Muhely Alapitvany/Workshop Foundation.
Terry Fox, Director & PDP Board: Jeff Cain, Chair, Chris Deephouse, Treasurer, Eun Jung Choi, Curt Haworth, Stacey Mann, Guillermo Ortega, Alexis Pappas, James Shelly, Jonathan Stein, Joan Myers Brown, Member Emerita.
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