August 10, 2017

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (the Center), a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing that is dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia, recently announced its 2017 grantees and fellowships and we are very proud to have been included. Philadelphia Museum of Dance, an immersive, intensive, city-wide project spearheaded by Dr. Miriam Giguere, Performing Arts Department Head, features a return engagement by acclaimed French choreographer Boris Charmatz and will explore the relationship between public performances and the exhibition of visual art.

In a large-scale, 4 to 6 hour performance event on the grounds of The Barnes Foundation, audience members will move through outdoor and indoor spaces, and in and around the visual art in the world-renowned collection. Thom Collins, executive director and president of The Barnes Foundation, will serve as co-curator, and Simon Dove, co-curator of New York's Crossing the Line Festival and Dancing in the Streets, will serve as the co-curator for participation from the New York City dance community. Lois Welk will spearhead Philadelphia curation. The event will feature performers from Philadelphia and New York alongside Charmatz' company and will include Charmatz' Danse de Nuit, a work for six dancers taking place in a public space at night. To delve further into the tensions of public and private life addressed in Charmatz' work, a performance of his piece Manger, exploring the act of eating, will be presented at FringeArts.

Boris Charmatz and his company return to Philadelphia after their 2016 residency, which included performances, lectures, workshops, and the acclaimed Levée des conflits co-presented by Westphal and FringeArts with the generous support of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. During his stay, Charmatz led professional workshops; a community workshop on Drexel's Pearlman Plaza; and a combined workshop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of their Anne d'Harnoncourt Symposium, Museum as Score, which had participants performing  on the Museum's front steps and with its iconic, city-facing fountain. Click here to read more about Levée des conflits and to see video and photographs from these events.

Before coming to Philadelphia, Charmatz transformed London’s Tate Modern into a Musée de la danse, with a company of 100 dancers using the cavernous space of Tate’s Turbine Hall as a venue for classes, workshops and performances, with specially adapted versions of dance works by Charmatz and other choreographers scattered throughout the Tate’s galleries. In 2008 Charmatz was appointed the director for the National Choreographic Center of Rennes and Bretagne, and his works have been performed around the world including at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Philadelphia Museum of Dance is made possible by the generous support of the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage: http://www.pcah.us/