Global Warming

An increasing number of Live Arts/Fringe acts are from far, far away.


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Published: Aug 29, 2007

Dada von Bzdülöw Theatre

They're coming.

One hundred eighty-four dancers, actors and performance artists of all types and stripes will be performing throughout the city over the next two weeks. The vast majority are Philly denizens, but, in this the 11th year of the Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival, an increasing number are from far, far away.

Arriving along with the artists from around the United States are six dance groups based in, respectively, Bulgaria, Poland, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belgium and the Netherlands, and altogether they comprise about 50 people. Belgians Kurt Vandendriessche and Charlotte Vanden Eynde, Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula, and Holland-based choreographers Isabelle Chaffaud and Jérôme Meyer will be presenting U.S. premières. (Chaffaud and Meyer are also Festival vets, having worked with local dancers and performed a duet in Nieuwe Nederlandse dans last year.)

Sidebar:

From Afar: Rachel Frankford runs down the imports.

By contrast, last year's festival had four international groups, but with only about half as many people. Nick Stuccio, producing director and founder of the Fringe, says that while from the very beginning the Fringe was an international festival, "There's been this great buildup of arts here, and people around the world know that. ... Governments might not know that, and travel writers don't know that, but artists know that. Our biggest exports are cultural. I can go to London or ... Hong Kong, and people go, 'Yeah I know your festival.' 'Yeah, I know Pig Iron' — in Prague."

However, bringing in international artists involves its own challenges for festival organizers. As well as airfare costs, there are numerous application expenses, most prominently that of the dreaded visa application. Thousand-dollar expedition fees — and, at least once in the past, calls to Sen. Arlen Specter's office — are necessary to make sure visas are processed in time. "We have had many close calls, but I can say we have never had a visa denied in the end ... but I wouldn't want to go through it again," says Carolyn Schlecker, managing director. But "good presenters around the country have lost these fights," says Stuccio.

Although Stuccio has close ties with festival presenters all over the world, the artistic scene in regions like the Middle East remain off his radar because, well, it's just a little more likely that a visa application filed in Riyadh will be rejected than one in Paris.

From the State Department's visa application for non-immigrants: "Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or have you ever participated in genocide?" Chaffaud checked "no" on behalf of her 8-month-old son.

Some artists say they are mainly thinking about working and performing, but others had a bit of tourism in mind. Chaffaud and Meyer rode bicycles around the city and were pleased with what they saw. "It's a big city but still has a human size, because the houses, the center is high but many roads are small buildings, it reminds us a bit of Holland, small houses with people hanging out in front of the house. ... It's very comfortable."

And Vietnamese choreographer Ea Sola said her dancers were looking forward to shopping.

Company Ea Sola

Rafal Dziemidok of Poland's Dada Von Bzdülöw Theatre described via e-mail the troupe's traveling routine: "I am scared of flights badly — so I drink. Leszek is very concerned about his seat on the airplane. Kasia always comes down last from the hotel room. Michal our lightman saves all of us in all difficult situations. We always have a long debate about where are we going to eat. All this is very expected. Painfully regular."

Comic mishaps aside, politics, war and national and personal identity and the relationship between the two are themes in a number of works this year. Linyekula's Festival of Lies explores both small everyday lies and the monstrous deceits inflicted upon the nation by numerous governments during 30 years of civil war (Kinshasa, to which Linyekula returned after eight years living abroad in order to form Les Studios Kabako, suffers frequent power outages, making international communication much more difficult). Ea Sola's piece is about the Vietnam War and its aftermath, performed by a generation that experienced that catastrophe only through the stories of their parents and grandparents.

Stuccio also sees a global political context for the festival itself. "[With] the foreign policy direction we've been taking ... our identity has taken a real beating over the past eight years." Events like the Fringe are important not just to bolster Philadelphia's cultural standing, but — with painful irony for those of us who think being the most militarily and economically powerful country in the world is not in itself always a good thing — to preserve a place for the United States in the international community. When asked about performing a piece about the Vietnam War in the U.S., Sola said she sees her work not as just about Vietnam but as a universal anti-war statement. Its purpose, she says, is "to be together, to remember, and to ask for no more war."

(r_frankford@citypaper.net)