Sunday, December 5, 2010 – 1:00pm

Site-Specific Performance as residency activity with Leah Stein

Leah Stein’s successful residency with Science Leadership Academy High School led to 66 10th graders creating their own ‘site-specific’ performances around the school at 22nd and Arch in 2009 and along the Schuylkill River as part of the Art in the Open Festival in 2010. The students first learned the tools and principles of orchestrating sound, movement, and place as shared by Leah Stein and then, in small groups, chose sites in the urban landscape. They made their own fabulous site-specific performance projects that were as varied in character and tone as the students themselves. This workshop with Leah Stein will offer the basic tools and ideas that she has honed through over 15 years of making work on site and will focus on how to empower the students to take total ownership of their process.

Artists

Leah Stein

Leah Stein, Artistic Director of the Leah Stein Dance Company, has been creating dances on site since 1993.  She has worked with young people in a variety of projects including Masterman High School students at Eastern State Penitentiary, Furness High School students at Historic Bartram’s Garden.  Her work has been performed regionally, nationally and in Scotland, Romania, Poland, Canada, and Japan.  She is a recipient of a 2010 Independence Foundation Artist Fellowship and teaches at Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges and at the Summit Children’s program in Mt Airy.  Most recently she co-developed, a collaborative site-specific performance project at  Shofuso, the Japanese House and Garden in Fairmount Park at part of the Fringe Festival 2010.