Philadelphia dances

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2004

Another addition to the city dance scene is Jeanne Ruddy Dance, founded in Philadelphia in 1999 by a former principal dancer of the Martha Graham Company. The company has enjoyed a favorable reception and, just a year after its founding, received The Independence Foundation Fellowship Award. Ruddy has developed a new center for dance that she calls the Performance Garage, designed as an incubator for classes, rehearsals, workshops, and performances. Jeanne Ruddy Dance performs in concert at the Mandell Theater of Drexel University June 17 to 19.

"BOOM!"

An important spin-off from the multi-art Fringe Festival is DanceBoom! Now heading into its third year, the annual winter festival, presented by the Wilma Theater and curated, in 2004, by Nick Stuccio and Joan Huckstep, takes the temperature of Philadelphia's independent dance scene. The series is designed to take risks and make some introductions. Some of the featured companies' names alone--SCRAP Performance Group, Moxie, Phrenic New Ballet--are sufficient to give the sense that these companies mean business. DanceBoom! is a platform for the plethora of small independents that constitute the city's diverse and remarkably cooperative dance community; for many, this is their first presenting opportunity with lull-scale professional production facilities. DanceBoom! is not only about presenting the work, but also providing the artists with career tools to go forward.

The Wilma, Broad Street's 300-seat theater, is a coveted setting for Philadelphia's dance companies; Blanka Zizka and Jiri Zizka direct the Wilma Theater and sponsor DanceBoom!, January 21 to February 8. Freed by the Wilma staff from handling their own technical work and public relations, companies like Group Motion, Phrenic New Ballet, Headlong, and Flamenco Old turned in stellar performances in the first DanceBoom!

Mixed bills have become a powerful audience-building tool. The curators make effective contrasts and comparisons pairing dissimilar dance groups. Bringing small companies's core audiences together has generated significant crossover interest among audiences. Prior festivals paired the cool cerebral dance of Leah Stein with the wild abandon of Kulu Mele African American Dance, and the culturally powerful dance theater of Merian Soto with the deadpan postmodernism of Nichole Canuso. Big hits were the Koresh Dance Company, a jazz-flavored company led by Ronen Koresh, and the Olive Hip Hop Dance Theater led by Raphael Xavier.

The 2004 DanceBoom! concert offers programs by some of the city's most innovative and successful choreographers, as well as some notable newcomers. Featured will be Headlong Dance Theater, Group Motion, Melanie Stewart Dance Theater, the Philadelphia Chinese Opera, Roko Kawai, Charles O. Anderson, Sabela Grimes, and Subcircle (Niki Cousineau with U.K. choreographer and dancer Carol Brown). DanceFusion, a 20-year veteran of the city's dance scene, will refresh its legacy with a staging of Time Plus Seven, a work choreographed by Anna Sokolow fur Pennsylvania Ballet in 1968.