PDP Presents

In 2009 Philadelphia Dance Projects launched Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents, a presenting series featuring dance performances, workshops, and “Informances” by individual dance artists and companies. PDP Presents provided an adventuresome series in contemporary dance within a broader local and global context through 2014. In 2015 the series was curtailed due to diminished funding support. From 2015-2018 PDP continued to do special presentations under PDP Presents. The full series is being re-instituted in 2020.

2017 PDP WOLF-IN-SKINS Dance/Opera Creative Residency with choreographer CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS and composer GREGORY SPEARS

Counter-tenor Anthony Roth Constanzo with Wolves in “Wolf-in-Skins” PDP Presents Fall 2017 photo credit: Steven Pisano

“Dance and opera certainly have been blended over the centuries, but not often with the sort of intensive interaction demanded by [choreographer] Williams and composer Gregory Spears, both seemingly fearless about striking out in new direction.” David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Operatic elements tell the story while dance explores the dreaminess of the mythology…it’s a visual feast.” - Merilyn Jackson, Philadelphia Inquirer

If you were one of the lucky audience to see the Philadelphia Dance Projects’ sold out performances of Wolf-In-Skins, Act 1 in 2013 you know how exciting this work is!

A PDP special residency will begin in 2017 and culminate with a script in hand presentation in the Fall when some of those marvelous singers, wolves and hounds, along with new puppets will return.

PDP has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a creative residency with choreographer, Christopher Williams and composer Gregory Spears to work towards finishing this wonderful dance opera.

“Operatic elements tell the story while dance explores the dreaminess of the mythology…it’s a visual feast.” - Merilyn Jackson, Philadelphia Inquirer

If you were one of the lucky audience to see the Philadelphia Dance Projects’ sold out performances of Wolf-In-Skins, Act 1 in 2013 you know how exciting this work is!

A PDP special residency will begin in 2017 and culminate with a script in hand presentation in the Fall when some of those marvelous singers, wolves and hounds, along with new puppets will return.

PDP Presents DANCE UP CLOSE

The full series is being re-instituted in 2020.

Artists presented in DANCE UP CLOSE have included among others; Headlong Dance Theater, Levy Dance, Miguel Gutierrez, Ellen Fisher, Shinichi Iova Koga/Ink Boat, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Lisa Kraus, Gabrielle Revlock, Lionel Popkin, Body Cartography, Faye Driscoll, Leah Stein Dance Co., Christopher Williams & Gregory Spears, Nichole Canuso, Subcircle, Nora Gibson, John Scott.

Calendar Archive

Trio A - a workshop with Pat Catterson

October 15, 2016 - 1:00pm

October 16, 2016 - 1:00pm

What can be learned today from Yvonne Rainer’s 1966 influential work Trio A? Fifty years later, the impact of Rainer’s revolutionary ideas and work is still evident in the current choreographic scene. Although Rainer’s famous “No Manifesto” was not written about Trio A, this dance is a manifesto in itself. Its form, vocabulary, and performing stance challenged traditional choreographic methods and modes of presentation.

Informance / niv Acosta

July 18, 2015 - 7:30pm

PDP Presents Dance Up Close Summer 2015
Informance / niv Acosta

Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 7:30PM
at SEI Innovation Studio, Kimmel Center
Broad & Spruce Sts, Phila PA

Subcircle premiere: "All this happened, more or less"

April 3, 2014 - 7:30pm

April 4, 2014 - 7:30pm

April 5, 2014 - 7:30pm

Choreographer Niki Cousineau and Designer Jorge Cousineau, as Subcircle, create poetic and moving theatrical works that focus on the space where performance happens. For this performance, the two artists will create a work that uncovers process, collaboration and design while in performance. All this happened more or less is a new work in which the movers, set and music are all protagonists. The piece begins with the collapse of all elements so that the rebuilding becomes the journey- exposing the partnership; decisions and silences. Performed by Niki and Jorge Cousineau with Beau Hancock, Rosi Langabeer, Christy Lee, Scott McPheeters and Christina Zani.

Subcircle’s attention to detail and the intensity of their full scale atmospheric work is outstanding among their peers. “Riveting” and “magically surreal,” Subcircle’s work “unfolds episodically yet seamlessly, with continuous transformations” which transform theatrical and site-specific spaces by merging dance, sound, set design, lighting, and film. Whether site-specific or performance for the stage, each work aims to convey to audience and performer alike an inseparability of performance from environment.

About the artists

SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance 2014

March 14, 2014 - 7:30pm

March 15, 2014 - 7:30pm

Nichole Canuso/ Philadelphia Super Group/Minneapolis

Jose Navarrete/San Francisco Elia Mrak/Seattle

Nora Gibson- Philadelphia / John Scott- Dublin, Ireland

February 27, 2014 - 7:30pm

February 28, 2014 - 7:30pm

March 1, 2014 - 7:30pm

Two choreographers on a shared program.

Philadelphia dancer and choreographer Nora Gibson will premiere Temporal Objects in which Gibson and collaborator, lighting designer Clifford Greer, combine forces again to integrate movement patterns and light, taking inspiration from fugue scores, romanticism, and perception of memory and time. “…severely focused intellectual beauty…” - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia Dance Projects