From Afar

A guide to this year's Live Arts/Fringe imports.

by Rachel Frankford

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Published: Aug 29, 2007

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Dancer and actress Charlotte Vanden Eynde and her collaborator Kurt Vandendriessche, a theater director, create a hybrid of dance and visual art as they project images and videos onto their moving (and nude) bodies in a hybrid creation of dance, physical theater and visual art.

Aug. 31-Sept. 2, 6 p.m., $15, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

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Witold Gombrowicz, who died about 35 years ago, is hardly a household name in the United States but is considered one of Poland's (and the 20th century's) foremost playwrights and novelists. Dance/physical theater company Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre stages a series of character sketches from Gombrowicz's work to the sounds of Mikolaj Trzaska's jazz score.

Sept. 12-15, 8 p.m., $15, Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St.

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In Company Ea Sola's first incarnation of this piece in 1995, the dancers were elderly Vietnamese women from the Red River Delta who had lived through the Vietnam of the 1960s and '70s. Vol. 2 looks at the next generation, represented by young dancers from the Vietnam National Opera Ballet of Hanoi. Sola grew up in Vietnam before escaping to Paris in the 1970s, where she trained as a dancer and lived for 15 years, until she returned to Vietnam in 1991. Sola's work since then has consisted of a series of works exploring the relationship between Western and traditional Vietnamese music and dance, and, most of all, memory and Vietnamese history.

Sept. 6-9, 8 p.m., $20, Tomlinson Theater, Temple University, 1301 W. Norris St.

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Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula and his company, Les Studios Kabako, who toured the United States in 2005 with Triptyche sans Titre, explore deceit and amnesia both political and personal. As befits a festival, food will be served and an in-house band will accompany the dancers (the band is composed of African immigrants now living in Philadelphia). The last show closes off the Fringe with an all-night spectacular. The performance is filled with references to life in the Congo, from the fluorescent lights littering the stage (where fluorescent lights are "everywhere") to the dawn curtain call of the last show; in cities like Kinshasa, gatherings often last all night because there is no way to get home until morning.

Sept. 13-14, 6 p.m.; Sept. 15, 11 p.m.-5 a.m., $20, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Joris-Jan Bos (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

French-born Isabelle Chaffaud and Swiss-born Jérôme Meyer take dance out of the theater and into your living room ("kamer" means "room" or "chamber" in Dutch — Meyer and Chaffaud now live in Holland). After performing on some of the world's largest stages, Chaffaud said, "We wanted to get close in the intimacy of the audience. ... We had this idea of bringing dance to the people, not in the black box of the theater where there is such a gap between the performer and the audience. ... You become much more aware of the relationship, the energy which flows between you and the audience, and ... you also become as a dancer very see-through because all your little gestures, all your intentions, [are] visible for the audience." Call and invite them over.

Aug. 31, Sept. 1, 2, 4 and 6 performed by Chaffaud and Meyer; Sept. 5, 7, 9, 13 and 14 performed by Meredith Rainey and Gabrielle Revlock, $100, call for reservations.

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Bulgarian director Petar Todorov and Slovenian choreographer Gregor Kamnikar created this piece about three women (Bulgarians Toni Pashova, Desislava Mincheva-Todorova and Lyudmila Miteva) coming to terms with the imminent moment of death. In this Satores & Arepo Group production, the delta of the title symbolizes the river plain of human life before it continues to the unknown sea.

Sept. 13-15, 8 p.m., $15, St. Andrew's Chapel, 4201 Spruce St.

 

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Off Script
Improv (No Lines!)
Exquisite Corpse
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Fest Guesses