Stunning ‘Portal’ opens 15th season for Mt. Airy dancers

Posted 9/15/16

Stein (right), who is also a skilled visual artist, is seen here in 1990, when she was studying classical Javanese dance in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. by Len Lear “Collaborating with Leah Stein is like …

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Stunning ‘Portal’ opens 15th season for Mt. Airy dancers

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Stein (right), who is also a skilled visual artist, is seen here in 1990, when she was studying classical Javanese dance in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Stein (right), who is also a skilled visual artist, is seen here in 1990, when she was studying classical Javanese dance in Jogjakarta, Indonesia.

by Len Lear

“Collaborating with Leah Stein is like sipping tea, putting your trust in the hands of a mad, brilliant and amazing scientist. It is a pretty funny experience! Leah's head is always up in the clouds in a wonderful way, but she knows what she wants. (It’s like) walking through a garden or a forest or a field.”

This comment was made by dance writer Anna Drozdowski for the website Thinkingdance.net about acclaimed Mt. Airy artistic director Leah Stein, whose Leah Stein Dance Company (LSDC) will open its 15th Anniversary Season with “PORTAL,” a site-specific work at Old City Café Frieda for Generations, 320 Walnut St. It will be the company’s seventh consecutive Fringe Festival appearance. The work will be performed on Sept. 15, 17, 21, 22 and 24, 6 p.m.

“PORTAL,” meaning entrance, opening, connecting across thresholds, invites both the audience and performers to experience unexpected, surprising and spontaneous inter-connections taking place between the street traffic, sidewalk pedestrians and the indoor café space.

The glass door of the Café, surrounded by glass windows, offers a “portal” of communication and interaction. Intentional and spontaneous events of meetings, partings, crossings, interactions, color, costume, sound and movement integrate an intergenerational group of LSDC dancers, community performers, audience and the general public.

A former prima ballerina, Stein, 51, is also a skilled visual artist and has studied classical Javanese dance in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. She has collaborated with many prominent composers, and she received a 2010 Independence Foundation Fellowship, three Pennsylvania Arts Fellowships for Choreography and a Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and she was a 2013 finalist for a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Her company has produced dance works that highlight the interaction between people, their culture and physical environment at major sites throughout the region, including the Fairmount Water Works, Eastern State Penitentiary, Longwood Gardens, Christ Church Burial Ground and Bartram’s Gardens, among others. Since 2009, the company has enjoyed an ongoing partnership with the Science Leadership Academy, where she has created an annual site-specific performance festival with 60 10th graders.

Leah's dance focus on the environment began when she was a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. "One of the first pieces I did as an undergraduate began when I was walking down a sidewalk in Connecticut,” Stein told us in an earlier interview. “Guys were pruning. There was a pile of beautiful pines; wonderful shapes; they held their form. I made a piece with them, my first solo. I still have two or three of those vines 30 years later.

"I've found such gorgeous sticks, like an animal, alive, inanimate, a weapon, a tool, a friend, a partner, a piece of architecture. I love the multiplicity of a place, of how even a gesture can mean something so different depending on who's doing that gesture. Objects are an extension of the body but also another element.

"I've done many pieces with sticks and branches since. I love place, objects. Before I did site work, I had this urge to give spaces a sense of place, even studios. I started bringing objects inside then. One old piece was called 'Fresh Eggs.' And I did a work called 'Cabbage Piece,' with real cabbages."

Frieda’s Café, where “PORTAL” will be performed, has been called “a hub for community art workshops, vocational training, industrial design prototyping and, ultimately, a place to reconnect people of all ages and economic situations. Rather than create yet another place to get coffee, the founders of Frieda for Generations want to bring the young and old together in a forward-thinking, design-minded environment.”

To learn more about “Portal,” visit www.leahsteindanceco.org or email ljeyoung@comcast.net To learn more about Frieda’s Café, visit www.friedaforgenerations.com.

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