Bodies of Text III Next Weekend

The weather is forecast to be beautiful for the Saturday, September 3rd, Bodies of Text performance. This is your last chance to see choreographers interpret artist books. Featuring Stone Depot Dance Lab interpreting Anna Mavromatis's In the Wings and Melissa Diane Dance working from Bonnie Whitfield's A Den Brooklyn Nights, this free performance will begin in Clark Park at the intersection of Woodland Avenue and 43rd/45th Streets in West Philadelphia, with shows at 4pm and 7pm. We invite you to bring your own blanket or chair. Performances will be followed by a discussion between choreographers & book artist (4pm show) and a reception (7pm show).

Stone Depot Dance Lab’s new work is a collaboration with visual artist Nicole Donnelly, who will create large outdoor sculptures for the piece. Anna Mavromatis’ provocative book, In the Wings, which utilizes a curved structure, pattern and multiplicity, provides the inspiration for Stone Depot choreographers Eleanor Goudie-Averill and Beau Hancock and Donnelly to create a unique outdoor performance environment. The piece also uses source material from early motion study photographs by Eadweard Muybridge. 

Melissa Diane (Jacelyn Biondo and Kristen Shahverdian) is a site-inspired, movement-driven performance company. For Bodies in Text III, Melissa Diane presents City Calm Down, inspired by Bonnie Whitfield’s heavily altered book, A Den Brooklyn Nights, in which Whitfield utilizes Thoreau's exploration of isolation in the wilderness in Walden to describe her personal isolation within her relationship as well as in her new city of Brooklyn. The work juxtaposes inside and outside worlds and explores how we act when we are alone and how we interact intimately when with another person. Often contradictory emotions explode in the work as Melissa Diane uses the backdrop of a West Philadelphia location, Whitfield’s book and their own character studies to explore subversive and aggressive behaviors, feminism and what it does to our behavior when we are seen or hidden.

Bodies of Text is a series of collaborative dance performances and art exhibitions tied to the book and its interdisciplinary interpretations. Premiering in April as a part of the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, continuing with shows at multiple venues in May and now part of Philly Fringe this September—Bodies of Text is rooted in the idea of Art à la Rue and brings Art to the Street in Philadelphia’s Rive Gauche, West Philadelphia.

In total, Philadelphia dance companies interpret seven unique books, selected from many submissions by Philadelphia Center for the Book members.  This performance is an opportunity for audience members to experience dance in an unusual setting, and reinvents the usual surroundings of the park for passersby. Site-specific works provide the audience with the agency to connect with the performance in their own way. So often dance performance is limited to proscenium stages, expensive concert halls, and obscure or inaccessible venues. In placing this performance in Clark Park and charging no admission creates a welcoming environment for all members of Philadelphia’s diverse community to share in the artistic process of the Bodies of Text project. The audience is invited to bring chairs or blankets for their comfort. The artist books will be on display at the event, and the dances will be followed by a discussion between choreographers and book artists.