Philadelphia dances

Among the city's most long-lived independent dance companies is Group Motion Multi-Media Dance Theater, transplanted from Germany and founded anew as a three-person collective in 1968 by Hellmut Gottschild and Brigitta Herrmann (both students of Mary Wigman), and Manfred Fischbeck, who was also a filmmaker. Now solo as the company's artistic director, Fischbeck is celebrating the company's thirty-fifth season. Fringe 2003 featured the collaboration of Group Motion's and Kenshi Nohmi/Dance Theater 21 from Tokyo, Japan. Group Motion traveled to Tokyo in fall 2003. Group Motion's three-part Culture and Species dance with visual and sound collages, respired by Fischbeck's return to Africa in 2002, is also on the Fringe Festival program, and will be presented at Dance Boom! 2004.

Fischbeck and Herrmann also created the Group Motion Workshop, an improvisational dance workshop for the public based on the structures used by the dance company. The workshop has been offered every Friday night in Philadelphia since 1972, and is also offered on tour and in special week-long retreats. In 1996, Fischbeck was instrumental in establishing a model dance company collective, the Kumquat Dance Center, a cooperative, artist-driven alliance that shares performance programs, performance and rehearsal space, and operational resources. Kumquat presents its annual festival there April 16-18.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

Whether due to Group Motion's model or coincidence, the artists' collective reigns in Philadelphia. In Fact there are not that many dance companies in the city that don't call themselves collectives. One booming collective, co-founded by three friends from Wesleyan University--Andrew Simonet, Amy Smith, and David Brick--Headlong Dance Theater, now comprises a core of five dancers. Currently embarking on a new Hotel Pool project to be performed in the swimming pools of hotels across the country, Headlong credits its freewheeling energy to the lack of a single artistic director. In 1999 the company won New York's coveted Bessie Award for its creation Star Wars.

A most insightful dance commentator, Headlong's Simonet, wittily identified "Eight Things That Work in the Philly Dance Scene:" Collaboration; Love--folks in Philly are supportive (seeing each other's work, giving feedback, and not being territorial about dancers); Cross-Pollination; Dancers That Are Choreographers That Are Dancers; Dance Theater Camp; Bill Bissell and The Pew Charitable Trusts; Alien Iverson; and The Rockies. Simonet suggests that in Philadelphia the traditional isolation of the solitary, visionary choreographer is being replaced by a complex web of creative relationships. He cites as a model the collective Moxie, a group that supports individual dance projects and also serves as a steady pool of dancers and collaborators. Simonet observes that such long-term ties can shine in ensemble dances where the performers know each other from top to bottom, inside and out. And beyond these intense working relationships is the community's casual camaraderie.