America Unfinished: Tommie-Waheed Evans
Dance Penn Live Arts Commission World Premieres
Tommie-Waheed Evans is a featured artist in our 25/26 season, America Unfinished, marking our country’s 250th anniversary. The choreographer’s latest work, in case of fire, speak—which we co-commissioned with ArtPhilly—responds to Martha Graham’s American Document (1938) and its essential question: “What is an American?”. Performed by the Martha Graham Dance Company with dancers from PHILADANCO!, the work premieres on our stage on May 29-30.
Ahead of the performance, we invited Evans to reflect and share his thoughts on the piece and this pivotal moment in our country’s legacy: Read more...
26/27 Season: Belonging
Belonging
What does it mean to belong? What do we carry with us, and what do we leave behind?
In our 26/27 season, Belonging, we explore how people navigate change and find acceptance in new worlds while longing for the community and traditions of home. Across great distances and generations, migration has formed our country as a living mosaic of cultures continually being remade, reimagined and passed on. We celebrate this vibrant and evolving tapestry through the lens of music, dance and theatre, revealing belonging not as a fixed place, but as something we must continually create together. Read more...
“What I Would Declare”: Conversations and Reflections at the Listening Cabinet
America Unfinished
Last year, as we launched America Unfinished, our 25/26 season marking America’s semiquincentennial, I searched for a way to engage audiences with questions of independence, interdependence, democracy and America’s future. Artists as diverse as Mark Morris, Johnny Gandelsman and Ephrat Asherie would approach the question of what it means to be American at this moment – how could audiences participate in that conversation?
Read more...America Unfinished: Delbert Anderson
America Unfinished Jazz Penn Live Arts Commission World Premieres
Delbert Anderson is a featured artist in our 25/26 season, America Unfinished, marking our country’s 250th anniversary. On April 26, Anderson and his quartet will perform the world premiere commissioned work Beyond Belief, a multi-part meditation on Navajo history and the tribe’s broken relationship with America. We invited Anderson to reflect and share his thoughts on his work and this pivotal moment in our country’s legacy: Read more...
The unparalleled Paul Taylor Dance Company returns with two masterpieces
Dance
“Each dance is a new beginning, a new place to discover”
Paul Taylor
With a 64-year career and 147 works, Paul Taylor (1930–2018) left an ineffable mark on American modern dance. His choreography, which reflects his deep roots as an artist, innovator and provocateur, is known for its overarching architectural structure, musicality and for tackling thorny issues. Read more...
The Final Year of a Powerful Residency
Accelerator Program Dance World Premieres
The world premiere of
Losing My Religion marked the last commission in Rennie Harris’
three-year artist residency. As befits his deep roots in Philadelphia, the residency’s final season engaged people across the city, from older dancers who remember Harris’ first impromptu performances to youth just beginning to make connections between the work of professional artists and their own creative energies.
Read more...The Power of the Right Internship
Sylvia Erdely (C ’27) and Chenyao Liu (C ’27) joined us at a recent board meeting to give insights into their internship experiences. Both students were supported by our
Arts & Entertainment Career Connections program, which offers stipend-supported summer internships with companies across the arts industries, and we are overjoyed that they had such positive, transformational experiences.
Read more...A Seat for Bob: Honoring the Legacy of Robert “Bob” Blake, C’72
The performing arts are about more than what happens on stage. They are about the communities that form around creativity, collaboration and shared experience. Recently, that spirit has been reflected in a special tribute campaign honoring Robert “Bob” Blake, C’72.
The tribute began with a heartfelt idea from Bob’s friends — Doris Cochran-Fikes, CW’72, and Denis Elton Cochran-Fikes, C’74, WG’79 — who wanted to find a meaningful way to celebrate his life and the impact he had on so many people. Read more...
Summer Internships in Philadelphia
Our
Arts & Entertainment Career Connections program and
CURF’s Summer Humanities Internship Program are two campus resources that provide paid summer internship opportunities in the arts, culture and entertainment fields to Penn students. Many internships are in Los Angeles, New York or other entertainment meccas, but some students chose to stay local in Philadelphia. I talked over Zoom with four students who received support from these programs to learn more about their experiences.
Read more...The Evocative Compagnie Virginie Brunelle Makes its Philadelphia Debut with Fables
Dance Penn Live Arts Debuts Philadelphia Debuts U.S. Premiere
Our dance audiences have often been wowed by the passionate, ingenious performances by some of Montréal’s most celebrated companies such as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballets Jazz Montréal, Compagnie Marie Chouinard and RUBBERBAND. Compagnie Virginie Brunelle, founded in 2009, is also part of Montréal’s rich dance legacy known worldwide for producing original and innovative artists.
Read more...
