Hidden Gems

by Peter Burwasser

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Published: Jun 30, 2009

Peter Burwasser Royal Theater

The theme that coursed through so much of the recently concluded Hidden City Philadelphia Arts Festival is history. Cultural history, to be sure, but also, by virtue of the remarkable venues, architectural history that told amazing stories about this city. But it would be just as easy to imagine the mystically and spiritually inclined festival-goer to have experienced the same events as a series of ghost tales. Specters seemed to loom everywhere; musicians, warriors, poets, preachers, divas; they all floated in and out of the myriad and varied presentations.

Yet another paradigm for Hidden City is opera, with Thaddeus Squire, executive director of Peregrine Arts and whose baby this is, as the energetic peripatetic impresario. His phenomenal ability to marshal an immense range of resources has produced a new monument on the Philadelphia art scene, indeed, one that deserves recognition on a far wider scale.

The Royal Theater show, Re-Sounding, certainly hit all of the buttons. The ghosts were already there, in the form of a parade of great black performers who once graced the fabled stage, including Pearl Bailey, Fats Waller and Bessie Smith. For those without the imagination to believe in ghosts, the projected images derived from old movies, dancing about the magnificently decrepit hall, gave physical presence to the concept. Network for New Music performed a sprightly new work by Todd Reynolds, and legendary sax player Marshall Allen, veteran of the Sun Ra Arkestra and still spunky at age 85, personified history, with a bravura if overlong solo of free jazz.

At some events, the venue itself upstaged the artistic material, which was certainly the case at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is a good bet that nearly everyone who attended Revival, with barely audible music by Phil Kline and prosaic choreography by Wally Cardona for Group Motion Dance Co., would have gladly paid the admission just to don hard hats, climb the skeletal stairs and see the space. It is immense, an ancient ruin of a once formidable temple. It is a jaw-dropping urban vista.

Battle Hymns was produced for a somewhat less mysterious edifice, the Armory at 23rd and Market. But this was probably the most successful melding of space, music and visuals. The large main hall is simple, but handsomely industrial, designed as a place to store weaponry. The military vehicles were incorporated into the work, as was, perhaps unintentionally, the reek of the diesel fuel-saturated concrete floors. Choreographer Leah Stein not only employed the dancers of her eponymous troupe, but also compelled the singers of the Mendelssohn Club to move with them. As they sang the haunting score of David Lang, the chorus marched in grid formation as the dancers weaved in and out of the phalanx. Lang set Civil War-era writings, including a famous letter from an officer to his wife, words of Lincoln, and songs of Stephen Foster, arranging the very syllables of the individual words in remarkably precise polyphony. Without ever referencing the blood and violence of the battlefield, he has constructed a profoundly moving condemnation of war.

Peter Burwasser Metropolitan Opera House (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The non-musical site installations, at six locations across the city, were no less compelling. Actually, sound was included in two of the designs, including Steve Roden's nothing but what is therein contained, tucked into four shabbily elegant rooms in the attic of Girard College's Founder's Hall, and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's Sonambulo, at Shiloh Baptist Church. Manglano-Ovalle bases his work on the emblematic sound of violence, a single gunshot, and then electronically manipulates it until it seems as benign as a mild, distant summer rainstorm. It is an extremely powerful and thought-provoking stew of conflicting gestures, presented in a dreamy, exquisitely lit space in what was once a Boy Scout center.

It is hard to recall an artistic endeavor in Philadelphia that has generated as much stimulation and buzz as Hidden City. It might come as surprise, given the sell-out crowds and excellent critical response, that this will not be an annual event. As costly an enterprise as it is, this time it is not about the money. Squire says that he needs a lot of time for the prodigious production hurdles of coordinating all of the elements, including the delicate negotiations among the artists, whose priorities do not always match. So while there might be Hidden City-like events emanating from the Peregrine Arts mother ship, another actual full-blown festival is at least two years away. I can hardly wait.

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)

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