DANCING IN THE STREET: Terry Fox (center), here with members of Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas, Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Co. and Reactionaries, is the new curator of the now-summer festival DanceBoom! : Michael T. Regan

So for the Wilma Theater's annual dance festival, now a summer event after four years in midwinter, the dancers take their acts to the middle of Broad Street.

Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas turns the sidewalks on Broad into an Afro-Puerto Rican festival with masked dancers and fabulous music for week one. Anne-Marie Mulgrew and dancers lead the audience along the Avenue before they enter the theater during week two. And Mixed Pickles, a group teaching and performing social dance from colonial times to the present, will get audience members dancing in week three.

"The flow is different," Fox says. "We're hoping people will get into it with us."

There's no great mystery to the decision to switch DanceBoom! to summer. The winter dance festival fell right smack in the middle of the Wilma season, which required considerable readjustment of the theater's lighting and other tech considerations. The summer dates free up the technical side of Wilma to be at the complete disposal of the dancers.

But that's not all. With the summer schedule, founding curator Nick Stuccio stepped aside because of conflicts with responsibilities as producing director of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe festivals. Wilma's Blanka Zizka asked Fox, one of Philly's most respected dance figures, to curate the series. As executive director of Philadelphia Dance Projects and former dance curator for the Painted Bride, Fox truly knows the local dance community. Was she surprised to be asked? "Well, sure, but delighted!"

Fox tapped Cathy Edwards, artistic director of New York's Dance Theater Workshop, to assist as artistic adviser, wanting the festival to include performers outside the metropolitan area. "It's good for local work to go under an eye like Cathy's," Fox says. "It may even work out that in the future there could be overlap between Philadelphia and New York. Maybe even a DTW Boom. We're not there yet, but it's an enticing idea."

The concept became even more expansive. Three programs would be spread over three weeks, with interactive events preceding each performance and late-night films following each show.

"There's no big theme," says Fox, but "if I had to describe it, I'd simply call it contemporary."

The festival invited internationally renowned contact improv artist Chris Aiken, who performs with two equally well-known improv cohorts, Angie Hauser and Lisa Gonzalez, using live improv music played by pianist Andre Gribou. Aiken calls what he does "compositional improvisation, which gives us a rough sketch of where the journey is going to take us." He's sharing the first program with Tania Isaac, who continues exploring her Caribbean and modern movement roots with a segue into motherhood called Stuporwoman. Then watch out for the Reactionaries: Fox warns "they will literally take over the theater with light, sound and action."

Matthew Neenan has gone from emerging to surging choreographer. His new Wonder Why, using Sinead O'Connor songs, will be the program two contribution of BalletX, the experimental troupe Neenan heads with Christine Cox. They're sharing theater space with Minneapolis-based Hijack, who are bringing a dance inspired by desire and knee-high leather boots. Their specialty is the "inappropriate," which sounds like they'll fit in beautifully. Finally, local Kate Watson-Wallace presents Living Room(s) with live music from Nouveau Riche.

Then Headlong Dance Theater brings out its much-anticipated Shosha, based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel, for the third program. "It's Warsaw before the Holocaust," Headlong's Amy Smith says, "but it's really about everyday life, people doing ordinary things in the shadow of war. The protagonist Shosha is retarded and childlike, an innocent who is very appealing. I knew from the beginning that [local dancer and choreographer] Nichole Canuso had to be Shosha." Still, the subject matter is, as co-director David Brick adds, tricky. "It's hard to find the right tone. A lot of the material is morally ambiguous. So we're layering it. We play a 1970s experimental theater putting on the production." Renowned local theater director Mark Lord has been an "extraordinarily helpful dramaturge pushing us in the right directions," Brick says. "We're following Emily Dickinson's advice: 'Tell the truth.'"

New York-based, British-born choreographer Keely Garfield shares the bill with Headlong, presenting Scent of Mental Love, described as a faux pas de deux danced to live music including "obstreperous waltzes." Niki Cousineau's Subcircle rounds out the program with Somewhere Close to Now, inspired by Alan Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams.

Finally, after each performance a mini-film festival takes place. "Under the Influence…" presents film documentaries about the fabulous Carmen DeLavallade, Mark Morris and local dancemakers, along with post-screening discussions.

"We're all nervous," Fox admits. "We do want it to be a success. We want audiences to come not just to see these great performers but to experience some of it directly."

DanceBoom!, June 15-30, $20 per event, Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce sts., 215-546-7824, www.wilmatheater.org.