Search

Go Deeper

PIFA Gets a Dose of the Fringe

Posted April 1st, 2011

In case you weren’t paying attention to the giant rotating digital cube on the Kimmel Center, there’s an enormous performing arts festival happening on Broad Street this April (which is also poetry month, fyi). Philadelphia International Festival for the Arts, aka PIFA, is showcasing talent from the orchestra and PA Ballet to scraggly independent artists. There are many veterans of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe being featured as well. Below are some of their shows . . .

Remember Paris
Featuring Geoff Sobelle and Nichole Canuso; Directed by Emmanuelle Delpech

Admired by The Diapason as “an improviser of genius,” international organist Thierry Escaich is renowned for his concert work as well as his brilliant compositions. Escaich and acclaimed director Emmanuelle Delpech musically and theatrically recreate Paris from 1910 to 1920, aided by Giles Boustani’s inventive projections of historic images and dreamlike reimaginings of the city of lights. A man and a woman, played by two silent actors, poignantly transport audiences back to a Paris of decadence and eroticism, of artistic daring and the devastations of war.
April 16 at The Kimmel Center, Verizon Hall

300 South Broad Street
Tickets: $19–$28

Paris Wheels and the Ready Maids
Directed by Sebastienne Mundheim; Sound by James Sugg

Ready-maids set the Banquet table spinning for Rousseau, Duchamp, and others. Sebastienne Mundheim and visual and performing arts collaborators create an INFORMANCE using puppets, dance, storytelling, and a hands-on workshop on Paris and the avant-garde.

April 21–23 at 11am, 1:30 and 4pm
The Kimmel Center, Hamilton Garden
300 South Broad Street
Tickets: Free!

AUTO
Choreographed by Kate Watson-Wallace, a follow up of her 2008 Live Arts Festival hit CAR.
AUTO is a movement installation that takes place in and around a moving vehicle. Using the landscape of a parking garage, audience members move and are moved through a series of performance vignettes that inhabit the at once private and public space that is a car. AUTO investigates the body of performer/driver, the body of witness/passenger, and the body of the car itself. AUTO explores how we communicate when we are encased in a small piece of metal that can speed, stop, lock us in, blow us up, or crash at any moment. AUTO is a performance that takes place inside a parking garage. Audience members will be asked to walk throughout the garage during the performance. AUTO is the partner piece to CAR, the sold-out 2008 Live Arts hit.
Please note: there will be no rain dates for these performances and attendees are encouraged to bring an umbrella if inclement weather is indicated.
April 16–17, 21–24, 28–30, May 1 at 8pm
Falls Center Parking Garage
3300 Henry Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19129

Tickets: $20

A Passing Wind: choreographed by Karen Getz
An enchanting chamber musical chronicling the (mostly) true story of Joseph Pujol – a.k.a. Le Petomane (“The Fartiste”). From provincial baker to populist entertainer at Paris’ renowned Moulin Rouge, Pujol grosses-out thousands, while out-grossing his contemporaries, until World War I leaves unprecedented devastation in its wake, and Pujol’s act of crepitation no longer tickles France’s funny bone.
April 7-17
The Kimmel Center, Innovation Studio
300 South Broad Street
Tickets: $15 with code WIND

A Night at the Movies: features Dito Vanreigersberg as Martha Grahamcracker
Live soundtrack performance to two classic silent films: Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon, France, 1902), Georges Melies (1861–1938); and Sherlock Jr. (1924), Buster Keaton (1895–1966). The films will be followed by reimagined selections from Cole Porter, performed by the kids of Independent Rock and Philly’s own drag chanteuse, Miss Martha Graham Cracker.
April 29 at 8pm
The Kimmel Center, Innovation Studio
300 South Broad Street
Tickets: $10

Punch
Miro Dance Theatre

Punch, a re-imagining of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, will be Miro Dance Theatre’s most ambitious work to date. Its creation is inspired by the interdisciplinary work of the Ballets Russes in the early 20th century and will feature a new score commissioned from composer Zeena Parkins, with choreography by Amanda Miller and video work by Tobin Rothlein. Punch will premiere at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts during the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
April 21, 22 at 8pm
April 23 at 2pm + 8pm
The Kimmel Center, Innovation Studio
300 South Broad Street
Tickets: $25

SKINK
Brian Sanders’ JUNK

A member of the faculty at the University of the Arts, Brian Sanders has choreographed and performed dance routines throughout the United States and abroad, and he is the founder of the JUNK dance company, a charity dedicated to making dance more accessible to younger audiences. Their show SKINK is a wild and wacky theatrical circus for kids. Set to a wide range of music, from pop to classical, it is a collection of 14 fast-paced vignettes in which the dancers use dance and physical theater to portray characters and creatures of zany proportions–from a 10-foot-tall disco cow on stilts, to a polka-dotted lizard, an old man who dances on his head, and a tennis player whose balls float. The Philadelphia Inquirer calls it a “small-top circus [that] packs big laughs.”
PIFA Franco Fun Tent (at the Free Library)
April 16 at 2pm
Logan Square in front of the Parkway Central Library
Tickets: Free.

For a full schedule of performances and events across the city, visit HERE