Also this issue: A Moment Like This City Paper's arts writers weigh in on the best of 2002. -Janet Anderson, Debra Auspitz, Peter Burwasser, D.A, D.A.F, D.W, Juliet Fletcher, David Anthony Fox, Lori Hill, J.A, Deni Kasrel, R.R, Robin Rice, David Shengold, David Warner and Toby Zinman The Full Monty -Toby Zinman Peter Pan and Wendy -David Anthony Fox The Nutcracker -Janet Anderson Reading Backwards Our book reviewers point out the year's bright spots. -Andrew Ervin, Juliet Fletcher, Frank Halperin, Brian Howard, Elisa Ludwig, Andrew Milner and Alex Richmond

December 25-31, 2002

artsbeat

compiled by Debra Auspitz

Now that we're all in a mode of reflection as the new year dawns, it's time to look back at some of the artistic leaps that Philadelphians took this year and ask: Did the risks pay off? Three high-profile changes in the arts scene in 2002 were the subtle shift in geography of the Fringe Festival's programming, the Wilma Theater's foray into dance with the DanceBoom! festival and the Print Center's public art project, IMPRINT. All can be called successful, even if success meant learning how to improve the next time around.

This year's Fringe literally entered new territory, moving several spotlight shows into Northern Liberties instead of its Old City base (the festival's programmed and "unfiltered" offerings also expanded into N.L., as well as South Philly and Rittenhouse Square). The total attendance for Fringe shows was 42,809, including free shows and the cabaret (up 17 percent from last year). Of 30,097 tickets sold, 61 percent of sales were for Old City shows and 17 percent for those in Northern Liberties.

Fringe founding artistic director Nick Stuccio says he feels utilizing Northern Liberties was a success. "Mark Lord's show [The Ride Across Lake Constance, a spotlight show] sold very, very well," Stuccio says. "Publife [another spotlight show] was a complete sellout." The other major draw to N.L., Thaddeus Phillips' performance piece, did not sell as well, having received some negative reviews early on. "I thought [Northern Liberties] was a perfect context," Stuccio says. "With some of the contemporary, interesting programming that we present, it makes sense to be in Northern Liberties."

Stuccio says he's learned that "people will come outside of Old City for cool stuff, so now we can free up ourselves and look for really cool sites all over the city. If there's a show that's driving us, we'll see if we can get a big empty warehouse at the naval base or do a show at the Mummers Museum we can do it, because audiences will follow."

Stuccio also curated the Wilma's DanceBoom! festival in January. The three-week fest played to almost capacity houses and the second installment will be unveiled this coming January. The lineups from last year and this year are noticeably different -- while the first DanceBoom! featured mostly artists who are very high profile in the Fringe and contemporary scenes (Court, Headlong, Phrenic New Ballet, Group Motion and SCRAP, to name a few), the new festival's lineup is noticeably more diverse. While there are still Fringe scenesters and contemporary artists, like Nichole Canuso, Leah Stein and Koresh Dance Company, the new DanceBoom! will also feature salsa-inspired choreographer Merian Soto, African-dance troupe Kulu Mele, all-female flamenco group Pasion Y Arte and olive: Hip Hop Dance Theater.

Says Stuccio of the change, "Last year they asked me to curate, and I sort of knew who I knew, and [the festival] was as representative of my palette as I had at the time. [This year] I started learning about other networks of dancers that are connected by culture or a part of the community they live in and I was just so impressed. [This year's festival] is truly reflective of my responsibility to look at the entire arts community."

This year's lineup pairs contemporary dance with companies based in more traditional and cultural forms of movement. The festival runs Jan. 22-Feb. 9.

The Print Center's IMPRINT public art project put the work of six contemporary artists on billboards, bus shelters, coffee cups and in newspapers for two months. The work was labeled only with the Print Center's website for those seeking an explanation. Though the center has no hard numbers of how many people saw the work, they did log about 15,000 hits on their website during the run of the show. The center's assistant director, Jenna Degen, says, "I received a lot of feedback; we consider it a success because we reached people who are not very educated about art. We got a lot of questions -- what did [the images] mean? Were they advertisements?" Degen says the only negative feedback she received was in regard to Dotty Attie's billboard. All of Attie's images use the text "Resistance and Refusal Mean Consent," but one accompanying image, of a nude woman lying face-down on a table with an obscured figure in the background, caused a slew of angry e-mails, from, interestingly enough, "mostly women in the medical community. That one image was perceived as rape."

Degen's favorite anecdote from IMPRINT involves Print Center curator of prints and photographs Jacqueline van Rhyn. Van Rhyn was trying to take a picture of a John Coplans' image on I-95 (Coplans takes extreme closeup photos of parts of his aging body), and rang a doorbell near the highway to ask if she could use the roof to get a good shot. "The woman who answered the door was in her late 60s or early 70s, very blue-collar," Degen recounts. "She said that image made her day every morning, and she was so upset that it would be taken down." Print Center executive director Christine Filippone says that right before the work went up, Clear Channel, the owners of the billboards set to be used in the show, "threatened to pull the Dotty Attie and John Coplans works." After Filippone organized about a dozen letters of support from IMPRINT's sponsors, the company agreed to install the work as planned.

The educational component of IMPRINT is ongoing, with students who worked with the center during the run of the show now creating a digital mural that will be installed at 17th and JFK Boulevard. Filippone says that the center is in negotiations to keep the artist-coffee-cups going at La Colombe in the future.