Just because it’s at the Fringe doesn’t mean you have to leave the kids at home. Check out some of the Festival’s productions appropriate for all ages. Bring the whole family!

(photo by Colleen Joy)

Spherus @ Philadelphia School of Circus Arts
Greg Kennedy – Innovative Juggler

Updated for this year’s Fringe, Spherus: a trio-show featuring international juggling champion Greg Kennedy, complemented by aerial dancers, Rachel Lancaster & Christine Morano. In collaboration with video-projection artist Jeff Bethea, multimedia effects enhance venue installation, juggling sculptures & acrobatics. More info and tickets here.

Ready for Night by Linda Dubin Garfield

Clothing: Stories from the Closet @ The Book Trader
Linda Dubin Garfield / Susan DiPronio

Clothing: it’s what you chose to wear, how you adorn yourself; it shows who you are. It’s what drapes the windows of your soul; clothing defines or hides you. Share your story—write it, create it, tell about it. Art materials provided at on-going workshops. Proceeds benefit victims of human trafficking. More info and tickets here.

Mark Wong, Nicole Burgio, Ben Grinberg, Lauren Johns, Nick Gillette (photo by Kate Raines)

Exile 2588 @ Painted Bride Art Center
Almanac Dance Circus Theatre

Exile 2588 is an acrobatic folk-music space epic adaptation of the story of Io set 572 years in to the future. Smashing together the genre of space epic with the sweet strains of American folk music, Almanac’s physical vocabulary swells to include break dance, static trapeze, and ever more innovative ensemble acrobatics, asking timeless questions about mortality and how much control we have over our bodies. Almanac’s signature style of physical storytelling, dance, and circus will be accompanied by an original song cycle by Chickabiddy (Aaron Cromie and Emily Schuman). The piece is outside eyed by Pig Iron Theatre Company’s Dan Rothenberg. [Disclaimer: This production does deal with serious themes of mortality and death.] More info and tickets here.

(photo by Lois Greenfield)

Philadanco in Concert @ Goodhart Hall, Bryn Mawr College

Philadanco

The virtuosic, versatile and blazingly energetic dancers of Philadanco in Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s infectiously rhythmic “Hands Singing Song,” Christopher Huggin’s beloved “Enemy Behind the Gates” and two more works. Philadanco exemplifies innovation, creativity, and fierce advocacy of African-American artistry. More info and tickets here.

(photo by Oreste Montebello)

Omeletto: Like Hamlet, Only Scrambled @ Liberty Lands Park
Ombelico Mask Ensemble

Told through the lens of commedia dell’rte, the story of Hamlet gets a deconstructed re-imagining that only Ombelico Mask Ensemble can deliver. Come and see your favorite commedia characters’ (Arlecchino, Pantelone, Capitano, and the rest) take on the Bard. Performed in English, Italian, and French. More info and tickets here.

(photo by The Rock School for Dance Education)

Ultraviolette @ The Rock School for Dance Education
The Rock School for Dance Education

Exciting, energetic young talent from around the world perform classical and contemporary vignettes that will keep you on the edge of your seat!  Alumni from The Rock School go on to join the most prestigious dance companies worldwide.  See the dance stars of tomorrow, today! More info and tickets here.

habitus @ Municipal Pier 9
Ann Hamilton [Organized by the Fabric Workshop and Museum]

Enter an immense and immersive installation at Pier 9 along the Delaware River. In this place of transition from water to land, a field of spinning curtains creates an interior landscape within which, suspended in time, a visitor can be both lost and held. Operating a pulley system, visitors propel giant cylindrical curtains to billow to gigantic proportions. As cloth swaddles at birth and covers in sleep; as a folded blanket can tell a story of trade; as a flag carries the symbol of a nation, habitus invites you to touch and be touched by the fabric of human experience. A visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surroundings of her large-scale multimedia installations, Ann Hamilton’s art making serves as an invocation of place, of collective voice, of communities past and of labor present. More info and tickets here.