We're Thrilled to Announce the Centerpiece Show of the 2010 Live Arts Festival...
DANCE
by Lucinda Childs, Philip Glass, and Sol LeWitt

Photo by Sally Cohn

"DANCE offers liberation through confinement, infinite variation through sameness; it conveys the elemental desire to move to music, to dance" - The New York Times

Lucinda Childs will bring her rarely performed signature work DANCE to the 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival this September. In this seminal collaboration featuring music by Philip Glass, dancers seamlessly interact with a film by Sol LeWitt to create a powerful retrospective of the human form in motion and an exploration of musical movement, rhythm, and harmony.

CLICK HERE for a clip of a recent production of DANCE at The Joyce Theater.

Performances will be held at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theatre.
Tickets and a full schedule will be available at www.livearts-fringe.org beginning in May.

The presentation of Lucinda Childs' DANCE in the 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance.

Spontaneous dancing erupted in the Mayor's Reception Room this morning upon the announcement of a project that will place a vibrant new work of community-based public art on the parking decks facing Interstate 95 at the Philadelphia International Airport. We're talking about a 50,000 square foot mural, incorporating the photographic work of its designer, artist Jacques-Jean "JJ" Tiziou.

Scheduled for completion in June 2011, this project is set to be one of Philadelphia Mural Arts' greatest accomplishments as it transforms a highly visible, dull facade:


into a brilliant representation of our city's life, culture, community, and artistic vision:



Visit This Page to learn more. And see the video in our previous blog entry.
Congratulations to Philadelphia Mural Arts and to JJ Tiziou!

What happens when the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program brings together the Philadelphia International Airport, Philadelphia Parking Authority, and photographer JJ Tiziou?

Come find out what happens, and participate in the announcement by Mayor Michael Nutter and Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler of an extraordinary new work of community-based public art that will celebrate How Philly Moves.

Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Time: Doors open at 9:30am. Presentation begins at 10:00am.
Location: City Hall, Mayors Reception Room - 2nd floor (please bring photo id to enter building)

Featuring live music provided by members of the ferocious and recklessly joyful West Philly Orchestra
This is about you, Philly. See you there.

Festival Bar last night was freaking packed. I didn't make it (or even try to, actually) inside the Red Bull party bus, which was shockingly crowded. But cupcakes were doled out, and the beer flowed like beer. I said hi to the Festival staff, Madison Cario, Brett Mapp; ran into Megan Mazarick, saw Les Rivera and Mimi Lien across the room, chatted with Richard (but somehow not Anna) Watson, saw a bunch of Pig Iron people post-show, and congratulated Kate Watson-Wallace on the opening of STORE (storm of clothes=pure beauty), and many more folks. I'll be back tonight!

But before I fill my gut with three-dollar cans of Sly Fox, here's the docket for today:

>>>2:00 pm: Urban Scuba, Gershman Y pool. This show is, I think, the only thing that's been done in that space for about a decade.

>>>4:00 pm: Up to Kensington for TIDE at the ICE BOX. For some behind-the-scenes stuff, check out our rehearsal report from earlier in the summer.

>>>6:30 pm: Nuda Veritas at the venue with the second-longest theater name in town: The Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3 (can you guess the first? I'm seeing Mike Daisey at it tomorrow). See below for an interview with director Natalie Diener.

>>>8:30 pm: To the Eastern State Penitentiary for Rusted Gates Volume 1: Leopard's Mouth.

>>>10:00 pm: Festival Bar! VJ Marge cuts up the videos; Dave Tat makes you shake it; artists talk about how they totally need to do a project together; we drink and dance 'til 2:00 am then stumble home to wait for tomorrow.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Steve Belkowitz

Festival Bar is going to be fuuuun. Tonight it opens at the southwest corner of 5th and Fairmount in Northern Liberties From the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe site, here's an idea of what you'll see:

VJ Yakov projects his special blend of found footage, Super 8, and 80s commercials all over the Festival Bar walls and a special network of screens.

Philadelphia Open Stuido Tours outfits the Bar with art installations straight from the studios of Philly artists. Laureen Griffin creates a painted expanse of wallpaper in support of her Gender Portraiture Project while Marisha Simons prints imagery onto large fabric panels that are hung about the space to create new environments. Darla Jackson's striking sculptures of animals, torsos, and heads invade the bar and gdloft brings a neo-POP poster and T-shirt installation based on de-contextualized Madonna lyrics.

Also, skulls by Jenn Procacci, a Red Bull party bus, and tonight, music from Lee Jones of Sundae.

After the jump, pics of us getting our bar act together, and some sneak peeks at the place you're going to close out your night tonight and every night through the 19th.

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Your trusty blog manager is going to see a heroic number of performances at this Festival. As part of our Festival TwitterFest, I'll be tweeting about what I'm seeing and doing all weekend, and the next two weeks, with the hashtag #LiveArtsFringe (and you should too for a chance to win a pair of free tickets to a Live Arts Festival Show). Follow me @GilewiczReview, follow the Festival @LiveArtsFringe, and find links to and bios for other folks tweeting about the Festival here.

So, where I'll be tonight:

>>>The Gonzales Cantata, 7:00 pm at The Rotunda. Have you seen the sick press Melissa Dunphy's been getting for this Philly Fringe show? Fox News (!) ran an item about the "choral" (ahem; story starts about 1:25 in) and Rachel Maddow was all over this show last night.

>>>STORE, 9:00 pm in the former/abandoned Rite Aid, 4237 Walnut Street. I saw a preview of this piece this spring and was absolutely entranced. I'm psyched to see the finished product.

>>>Super Heroes Who Are Super!, 10:30 pm at Plays & Players. I'm not totally sure I can get from West Philly to Rittenhouse in 30 minutes or fewer, but I'm gonna try, because I want to geek out at this staged reading of comic books.

>>>FESTIVAL BAR! Because of the previously stated need to cultivate my inner comics nerd, I can't make it until midnight. But I did get a head start preview last night. The place looks dope, and if you've been in the past, you know the opening night party is always super hot. Tonight: Buttercream cupcake truck dispenses free cupcakes, the bar dispenses drinks (not free), the photo booth dispenses free memories (which might be useful after the number of drinks you'll drink), we've got live video projections, and Lee Jones of the legendary Sundae parties on the decks! Why would you be anywhere else? 10 pm to 2 am, southwest corner of N. 5th St. and Fairmount. Word.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Nicholas Gilewicz

That Wall Street Journal Law Blog story on The Gonzales Cantata is blowing up!
>>>Slate tweeted about it.
>>>Andrew Cohen, chief legal analyst for CBS News, retweeted it.
>>>The Huffington Post blogs it.
>>>And so does Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic/The Daily Dish.
>>>Don't want to brag (ok, maybe a little), but you totally heard it here first.

And in Live Arts Festival news: Metro gives love to Kill Me Now and FATEBOOK, and chats up Nick Stuccio about getting that money.

Today's random aside: Speaking of getting money, does anybody else miss that store called Get Money Girl on Spring Garden? It had the best store name ever.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

>>>Weirdest publicity break ever? Well, not really, but pretty cool: Melissa Dunphy talks to the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog about The Gonzales Cantata. Meet the cast and video preview here; half-price ($10) preview tonight at The Rotunda, 7:00 pm.

>>>Crazy coverage in City Paper, starting today!

>>>The role of women in theater (not as actors, but in the institution, you see) has been much in the news and hotly debated this summer. In Philadelphia Weekly, J. Cooper Robb has a great story on the slew of great work by or featuring women in this year's festival.

>>>Among Philadelphia Weekly's weekend picks: Festival Bar opens tomorrow, kids! Well, 21-and-ups, anyway. Check back later today for pics of this year's bar-space-in-progress as we get ready for a packed house tomorrow night. They can't turn me away, because I gotta cover it, but you should get there early.

>>>The Festival imports performers from Poland, sure, but did you know we also import them from Montgomery County?

>>>Rep Radio, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite area podcasts. The latest features EgoPo's Company and folks from Monday night's final Philly Fringe previews: Crooked House, Katie and Pitark, The Gonzales Contata, Mr. Harry, Pumpernickel and Marmalade and Shakesploitation II: Iambic Boogaloo.

>>>Lindsay Harris-Friel runs down her picks at Phawker. I'm actually going to four of the six shows Lindsay selects. Who is this person, who knows my aesthetics?

>>>Oops, Geoff Sobelle's appearance on Fox29's "Good Day Philadelphia" got bumped to tomorrow, sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 am.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Matt Dunphy.

OK, that was kind of a lame headline. But:

>>>Check out some photos from the rehearsal for The Gonzales Cantata on composer Melissa Dunphy's Flickr stream. Apparently, many of these rising opera and choral stars from around the country are also crashing at her house. Catch as catch can!

>>>Steve Weisz from Music & Motion wants to give you a pair of tickets to the 9 muses. From Steve: "Win a pair of tickets to the Sept 5th at 3:30 Fringe performance of . Follow us and send a tweet to @musicandmotion on Twitter for a random drawing to be held on 8/31." [Addendum: Your tweet must have the word "muses" in it to qualify.]

>>>And the big news of the day is that the Live Arts & Fringe box office opens at 1:00 pm! That's almost right now! Go get your tickets before all the tickets get got. Actually, I think "get got" means something else entirely; tickets that get got are probably pretty useless. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get yours. Southwest corner of 5th and Fairmount.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo credit: Matt Dunphy