PHILADANCO! - For the Love of Philly

PHILADANCO! returns to the Perelman Theater from December 4 to 6 with For the Love of Philly, a program built around the city's own Black cultural legacy and the music of Philadelphia International Records. The opening night on December 4 doubles as a celebration of founder and artistic adviser Joan Myers Brown's 95th birthday.

The bill mixes new work with reimagined classics. Rennie Harris and Dawn Marie Bazemore both contribute world premieres, and co-artistic director Tommie-Waheed Evans brings Promise Me You Won't Call. Gene Hill Sagan's Sweet Agony is also on the program, alongside a reimagined version of Dwight Rhoden's Tribute, with music drawn from the Philadelphia International Records catalog. The whole evening is tied together by the Sound of Philadelphia.

It's a good moment to look at where the company comes from. Philadanco grew from a community arts organization founded in West Philadelphia in 1970 into a world-celebrated dance company. Led by Joan Myers Brown and her seventeen dancers, it's known for choreography that blends African American-based dance with ballet, jazz and modern, with a repertoire that includes works by Talley Beatty, Ronald K. Brown, Donald Byrd, George Faison and Gene Hill Sagan. The company premieres new productions and performs around 40 weeks a year, at home and abroad; critics have called its style visceral, fierce and sensuous, and its dancers a 'miracle of skill and energy'.

For the Love of Philly runs December 4 through 6 at the Perelman Theater, part of The Kimmel Center at 300 South Broad Street in Philadelphia.