This Sunday, check out the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Gorky retrospective

Abstraction with a Palette, Gorky, c. 1930

Why you should join, Example A: Flashpoint Theatre Company, “A disgruntled store elf goes postal on a crowd full of children … or maybe he just gripes about it for an hour and drinks a lot of scotch.”

DISCOUNTED PRICE, $7.50

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[3 second pause]

SCUUBAAA!

Every time I see the title for this 2009 Philly Live Arts Festival performance, something within me yearns to shout it out like that. Brian Sanders’ choreography and John Luna, Lesya Popil, William Robinson, Brian Sanders’ dancing only reinforced my passion to do so.

Shown early last month (September) in The Gershman Y’s Pool at Watts Street between Pine and Lombard, this 50 minute production supersaturates its audience’s sensory experience with lights flashy enough to make you feel like you’ve been transported to a Moscow Eurotrance club, music so powerful its bass beats through the natural rhythms of your heart, and plastic bag costumes to make your skin feel like it’s slowly amphibian-izing. All this hits you, of course, while you sit shrouded in darkness and anticipation for what a performance with the title “Urban Scuba” could possibly entail.

At first, the theatrics made me wonder if Sanders purposefully borrows circus techniques and style to distract the audience from a an aesthetic lack on the dancers’ part. I soon regretted that thought. Sanders divides his 50 minutes into sections, each with a particular character, tone, and original choreography to match. Some displayed sparkingly witty humor, others a passionate lyricism—all of them showed off the team’s physical artistry and strength. In this case using an urban indoor swimming pool as the set not only worked, but also became essential to the direction and choreography: the dynamics of each short piece’s movement involving leaps into a seemingly abysmal space (which the mostly empty pool creates in the absence of the lights I’m assuming are usually on), synchronized swimming/floating/splashing, and drifting of various materials through the air and onto the shallow water. Did Sander’s brilliant creativity and inter-elemental synthesis produce a result too over-the-top for its audience to handle (i.e. am I wonky in loving this performance with so much enthusiasm)? I argue not (hope not, at least, regarding the second). On a scale of “not so great,” “had its moments,” “I liked it,” “very good,” to “amazing,” 81% of the audience chose “amazing” and none chose “not so great.”

Perhaps I respond this way because of a personal tendency to philosophize and project an unconscious desire for profundity onto situations, but “Urban Scuba” speaks to (what I think are) primal instincts within me. I felt celebration when the dancers gracefully leapt from ledges and into the air, struggle when they fought to climb up a wall with trash bags tying their legs together, disfiguration when I watched them ooze through the mucky tar/black paint/mud covering their bodies, and transformation as I witnessed their group-individual relationships and costumes (or, occasionally, lack thereof) shapeshift. The performance’s ability to make me think yet not quite grasp struck a chord. It fulfills “Live Arts” quite literally.

But more than all this, “Urban Scuba” is FUN—to talk about, to experience, to share (and, I hope, to perform!). My rating? 5 out of 5 for sure.

Submitted by Fonda Chen, class of 2010

During this year’s Festival, I was once again physically proximal to the performers. I attended Urban Scuba which took place in the abandoned YMCA swimming pool at Broad and Pine streets. We quickly scurried down the alley to the long pathway to the entrance so we wouldn’t miss the raise of the (in this case, shower) curtain. Entering through the shower/locker rooms, as would be normal in any other trip to the swimming pool, we got into the shallow end of the pool and experienced what, even then, and especially now, seems like a dream. While we sat anxiously in our seats at the shallow, and currently dry, end of the pool, the performers danced, flew, swam, crawled, splashed, twirled, leapt, climbed, bounced, fell and glided through a created jungle of imaginative refuse. The four performers put on a circus of a show involving acrobatics, modern dance, creative movement, trash bags, packing peanuts, strobe lights, shower curtains, tar (or was it paint?), ominous beats of music and a shallow sea of water. The reason and message of the performance was never explicitly indicated. I came out thinking of an imagined reality of life existing in the sewers below and of an environmentally damned future in which the trash no longer fit into dumps and instead hung around whatever life forms remained or had evolved. While the show was pretty over the top and out there–I enjoyed just that. The beauty of the Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival is that it is a venue for experimental theater, dance, music, and all things art. Some shows are more successful than others– but in all cases, they elicit opinions and responses from the audience and represent creative, passionate, and active members of the Philly arts community.

A final show I was able to see at this year’s Festival engaged me in a whole separate fashion. Taking place in a traditional theater setting—Suzanne Roberts Theater on Broad Street—I walked in to the theater with a group of friends to see “The Last Cargo Cult”. Upon entrance we were given the top bill from a stack of money that a woman at the door told us to “hold on to.” I got a one dollar bill and focused on finding a seat. After we settled, I looked over, and my friend had a ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL. He feared he would be called on to participate during the show; I quickly assured him that I would swap him bills and assume whatever participation the ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR bill might entail; I also told him that if we got to keep them in the end, I would be keeping all ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

When I gained possession of the ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL it was beautifully new and crisp, the way one would think fake money would feel. The lights came on and the storyteller of the evening’s piece, Mike Daisey, took his place in a chair in front of a simple desk on which a small glass of water and note pages were. Mike Daisey led the audience on a journey of stories ranging from the South Pacific to his childhood. Over time he spoke of the importance of money and the character of various cultures and their relationship to money. The details of each portion of the stories escape me now, however whenever Daisey spoke of the excess and the lack of money in various scenarios, my stomach turned over a bit—and that I distinctly remember. I was aware of that ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL at every moment of the show. A ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL is not something you would want to accidentally drop (and given my recent wallet- and key-misplacement, I had good reason to pay close attention). Nearing the end of the 2 hour (or so) show, I looked down at my ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL when Mr. Daisey said that the money given out at the beginning was his own that he would have made from the evening; my hand was in an incredibly uncomfortable looking claw shape and the bill was crumpled up into a ball within it; my friend’s one dollar bill lay comfortably at peace on top of his program and was just as crisp as it had been when the woman gave it to me when I walked in. Mike Daisey was giving us the choice, as he said we always have, of doing what we will with the money we have. We could give him back the money that was given to us at the door and was rightfully his (and there was a bowl eagerly awaiting the bills near the stage); however, there was no way to track who had what bill, so we could swap with a separate denomination we had in our wallet and give more or return less.

Knowing that a ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL was a big bill not to return, and knowing that others knew I had that ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL, and knowing what a great party that ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL could have sponsored, and knowing how long that ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL could last me at the farmer’s market, and knowing that some of the rich patrons of the arts in the audience that received a one dollar bill would put in more in the end, and knowing I could pocket that ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL, I returned all one hundred dollars to the bowl. I wonder how the show and the stories would have effected me had I stayed with my one dollar bill—but I’m quite glad I got to experience the stories in an ultra-sensitive and focused frame of mind. It was worth all hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents that I did not leave the theater with in the end.

[submitted by Ingrid Lindquist]

I found that one really tricky… but instead of brushing up on my art history, I found more art-related quizzes from the ultimate time-eater, sporcle!

Name these art movements!

Name these works of art!

Where’s the art at?

And from our VERY OWN MUSEUM:

PMA art quiz

I think we should create a quiz about art around campus… like, where did those hands come from on the gate to the fine arts building?? How many Ben Franklin statues are there? …and how manyof these statues have been peed on?

Digital; Manhattan, NY

Digital; Public art in Brooklyn, NY

Black & White film; on campus

]]> http://artsandthecity.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/photography-by-priscilla-leung-class-of-2012/feed/ 0 artsandthecity LightCathedral MishMosh scan0004 http://artsandthecity.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/fabric-workshop-and-museum/ http://artsandthecity.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/fabric-workshop-and-museum/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:24:12 +0000 artsandthecity http://artsandthecity.wordpress.com/?p=38 Continue reading →]]>

Today, on the fifth floor of a colorful building on 12th and Arch, in an unfurnished  room with a single floor-to-celing window, I saw a 52 foot long whale. Made of felt. Entitled Mocha Dick after the great whale the inspired the novel of the like-sounding name, this baby was the brainchild of one Tristin Lowe. It has a nylon inflatable core, “like a bladder,” our guide said, and an air pump that keeps Mocha Dick from exhaling. It turns out that this air pump can be unpredictable, and after a recent power shortage M.D. was out of commission for 3 days. Luckily enough, I was able to witness Monsieur Dick in full form. With such a large peice, it is difficult to stand back and take the whole of it in, which adds to its impressiveness. I was told Lowe likes to go big. Mocha Dick is big.

What I found equally impressive was the zoom-in. Mocha Dick is covered in barnacles, with zipper and straight stitches running down its sides. One section of the felt looks like it had been run over many times to make a gash. I swear, in the right light, if you squint, you can just make out the words “Ishmael waz here”. But in all seriousness, this was an awesome work. Lowe designed the piece and managed the artists from the workshop who contributed to the sewing.

I stole some pictures from this wonderful blog, whose authors did a much better job of describing the artist, his work, and the details of Mocha Dick.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum is only $3, and they have cool exhibitions going on all the time. The FWM website. They offer apprenticeships and residencies, too.

This is what they’re up to.

I think we can all take a cue from these eager arties and EXPLORE ART IN PHILLY!

I suggest checking out Gallery 339, Philadelphia’s only Fine Art Photography Gallery. And it’s free (bonus!), and close- 21st street (double bonus!).