Growing up with the Philly Fringe
For Music & Motion Dance, the annual Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe has become a rite of passage. The dancers first performed in the Fringe festival four years ago, when the majority of the group was in their early teens. They were one of the first youth companies to participate in the festival, which provides artists from all over the world with an opportunity to exchange creative energies and ideas, and share their work with audiences and the international arts community.
Now with the 2007 Fringe on the horizon and with most of the original cast in their freshman and sophomore years of college, the group looks back at its own transformation and growth from being a part of the “fringe experience”.
Each year, Music & Motion Dance, a performance based dance company comprised of young adults ages fifteen through twenty-one years of age, spends an average of six months preparing an entirely new dance work for fringe. A typical production is comprised of anywhere between eighteen to twenty individual pieces, and each dancer contributes to all facets in the selection of music, interpretation, and the actual choreography. Everything in the company is done as a group process.
Being able to perform in a professional arena with other major dance companies and artists locally, nationally and internationally pushes the group “to perform at their very best,” according Noelle Tolbert, a four-year veteran dancer of Fringe. She adds, “There is always a lot of pressure in getting ready for Fringe, but out of this experience we have always grown closer as a group. The camaraderie we experience along with the memories from Fringe will be with us for a lifetime.”
Kristen Konski, also a Fringe veteran dancer, will perform for perhaps the last time at Fringe, as she prepares to continue her college studies abroad in Australia next year. Now at eighteen years of age, it is a mix of bittersweet feelings that she moves on, especially in looking back at what she has achieved personally from participating in the festival. “Fringe is a big deal for us, it is a chance to showcase what we have accomplished all season in what tends to also be the largest venue and audience of the season as well,” states Kristen. It has challenged them to “be more creative, think outside of the box and try things we would never have tried before” she adds.
For the entire cast of Music & Motion, there is a nervous energy and excitement with the Fringe festival just weeks away. “Being in Fringe is the realization that we are a part of something much larger, a means of bringing the performing arts to so many people. It builds community, makes performances accessible to all, and truly fosters an environment of artistic freedom and expression,” according to dancer Andrea Piovane. “That,” she is quick to add, “is so in keeping with what our dance company is all about.”
You can catch Music & Motion Dance production of RED on Saturday, September 8th at 2:00 and 8:00 pm at the Concert Hall, Independence Seaport Museum, Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia. Tickets are $10 online at http://www.music-and-motion.com/fringe.html or through the Fringe Box Office at 215.413.1318 . The group will be donating a portion of ticket sales to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.