MUSIC>

BIGBABOON AND MSDT BACK FOR NEW FESTIVAL:

NEW - May 31- June 18, 2005; Arts Bank, Philadelphia, PA

NEW is a cooperative artist-driven performance venue at the Arts Bank that will bring Philadelphia's cutting-edge dance theater to the dynamic and growing Avenue of the Arts; adding to the Avenue of the Arts constellation of offerings, and creating a critically needed venue of commensurate visibility and professionalism for many of the region's most respected and innovative dance theatre troupes. Audiences are drawn to the venue as a center for cutting-edge work. There will be six programs consisting of Group Motion, Headlong, Paule Turner's c o u r t, and others.

NEWS>

BIGBABOON HITS THE FRINGE WITH MELANIE STEWART DANCE THEATRE

PHILADELPHIA FRINGE FESTIVAL '04

A dance that skewers with charm

By Eils Lotozo

Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

It was April 2003, and the invasion of Iraq had just begun when Peter Clerke arrived in the United States for an artist residency at Rowan University in Glassboro. In between directing a student production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Clerke, the artistic director of the Scottish theater company Benchtours, found himself glued to the television.

Channel-surfing through the cacophony surrounding the war, past the pundits, politicians and flak-jacketed correspondents, "you were bombarded with so much information, but no one was really telling you anything," Clerke said. "It sounded to me like people speaking in tongues."

This was the spark of the idea for Babel, the coproduction of Benchtours and Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre playing through Sunday (Sept. 12) at the Philadelphia Live Arts/Philly Fringe Festival.