DanceHouse

by Deni Kasrel

Dance

Melanie Stewart has been around the creative block once or twice. Since 1984 she's helmed her own company, Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre, with which she attracted attention as someone who enjoys piercing taboos via scathing satires skewering popular perceptions of sexuality, beauty, politics and religion. Along the way she's teamed with poets, lyricists and European physical-theater groups that share her penchant for provocative interdisciplinary performance. Several years back Stewart decided to share her wealth of knowledge regarding what it takes to put on a show by assuming the added role of producer-director-mentor to kindred spirits in the local dance community who could use a leg up in staging their own presentations. That led to DanceHouse, now a recurring showcase for artists who lack certain supports (such as funding) necessary to get their works seen. This season's collective shindig features both up-and-comers and been-around-the-blockers. A local contingent — MSDT, court, olive Dance Theater and Meghan Durham — is joined by out-of-towners Lorelei Bayne (New York), Kinetic Architecture (New Jersey) and Myriam Herv-Gil (France). A fair amount of the material is work in progress. Some of it may appear in finished form at Stewart's mini-performance festival, "New," running later this year. Meanwhile, this one's a bit of a performance laboratory. Says Stewart, "DanceHouse should be a safe place to create community but also to feel that you can fall down, and that's OK too."

DanceHouse, Fri.-Sat., June 18-19, 8 p.m., $15, Drake Theater, University of the Arts, 1512 Spruce St. 215-359-7775.