Drexel Westphal and the Barnes Foundation present 'Philadelphia Museum of Dance'

The free event offered multiple opportunities for attendees to watch and join in the movement in both indoor and outdoor spaces. The overcast, humid weather wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t keep away the large, diverse audience. I saw more young and nonwhite faces at the Barnes than ever before.

The event lasted from 3pm to 9pm, and participants were encouraged to come and go. I arrived for the opener and stayed for three more performances.

Art on the floor

I love the idea of a live dance exhibit in an art museum, but I was not sure what to expect of Charmatz’s vision. His 2018 Fringe Festival entry, manger, included performers chewing paper as a way to explore the nature of consuming food, information, and more. It’s an interesting concept, but it sounded singularly unappealing as a performance. Although I did not see the show, what I heard wasn’t positive.

Philadelphia Museum of Dance followed Charmatz’s high-concept approach; happily, here he succeeded. The day’s opening event, a warmup for attendees’ bodies and minds, began with a series of movement activities. Charmatz led participants through exercises drawing from ballet, modern dance, and improvisation.

His verbal instructions charmed me, thanks to his French accent and witty quips. For instance, he directed participants to move every part of their bodies at the same time, observing, “It looks like nothing, it’s ridiculous, but people are still taking pictures!”

The second part of the warmup was more informative than entertaining. As Charmatz segued into a lecture that raised interesting questions about dance’s potential for activism, I wondered if he was losing some of the audience. Dance and movement can interrupt flow, Charmatz explained, and this has the power to force us to rethink our ideas about place.

While I listened, I realized that staging a temporary, movement-filled event in a fixed place normally devoted to a different purpose accomplished many of these aims and worked to democratize dance, art, and museums. Yet I started to get lost as Charmatz discussed flux, liminal spaces, and non-places, even though I am familiar with the latter term (coined by French scholar Marc Augé).

From the street to the institution

Luckily, the focus shifted back to exuberant movement with the next event, a medley of choreographed and freestyle dance performed by It’s Showtime NYC! This street dance company, one of New York City’s largest, brought 10 talented dancers. Its members delighted the crowd with their impressive mixture of hip-hop and breakdance.

Company members began with a roll call during which they introduced themselves by hitting the dance floor one by one to show off their skills. These included moonwalking, robotic moves, leg jumps, the worm, and jaw-dropping feats of double-jointedness.

In some sections, dancers created formations with synchronized movement. One section incorporated slow, stuttering steps followed by two groups of dancers moving their arms and bodies like waves in a tide. In the final section, a dancer’s stiff, puppetlike motion contrasted with other performers scooting across the floor on their backs, stomachs, and heads.

Next was Charmatz’s 1973, a work he developed with 200 college students from Bryn Mawr, Drexel, Rowan, Temple, and University of the Arts. Performed indoors in the Barnes’s ground-floor Annenberg Court, 1973 included versions of the gestures and exercises in Charmatz’s earlier public warmup.

The student dancers, dressed in street clothes and athleisure wear, committed fully to the piece’s physical and performative demands. For instance, two dancers conveyed pain: one tore at her breast, while another grabbed his groin and hopped across the floor.

The space was filled with movement at various tempos and constantly shifting configurations of bodies moving solo, in pairs or trios, and in large groups. This performance was frenetic and enthusiastic, but ultimately more style than substance; so much happened so fast that nothing stuck.

Access restricted

Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, Maria Hassabi, and Oisín Monaghan performed Hassabi’s STAGED?, a work that uses stillness and slowness to reflect upon time. STAGED? took place outside the museum’s main entrance, creating a kinetic live sculpture of bodies. The dancers shifted positions to create new shapes, moving at speeds that suggested languidness but required incredible control.

Next came Palace in Plunderland, by Clarie Bishop; Solo Forest; a soul train led by Clyde Evans Jr.; Charmatz’s danse de nuit; and more. I left after a few hours, having taken my fill of dance and of choosing between standing or sitting uncomfortably. One of the event’s downsides was its lack of seating, which made it less accessible and took away from the fun.

Indeed, there just didn’t seem to be enough space for the audience, period: especially during It’s Showtime NYC!’s performance, viewers were forced to squeeze together. It was hard to see what the dancers were doing, and the Barnes’s West Terrace floor and few rigid benches were equally unforgiving.

However, Philadelphia Museum of Dance realized Charmatz’s signature concept of public choreographic assembly in an innovative event full of multiple forms of dance, movement, and performance. Its interactive, democratizing approach was a resounding success, and I hope Philadelphia can look forward to more events like this.