STEPHEN WELSH/SWERVE

Performances

TWITTERED OUT?…TXTING 24/7?…BLOGGED TO DEATH?
Come See SWERVE’S latest musings on technology, *VIRTUAL DEPRIVATION*. This media-infused dance/theater work explores the line between gadgets that assist and gadgets that dominate. Welsh’s revitalized troupe will bring his signature: athletic style, fluid choreography, prop manipulation and comic bits to life! With a new sound-bite-pounding score by longtime collaborator, John Glaubitz, this WORK-IN-PROGRESS promises to reboot your system.
Etc. Performance Series
Sat. June 6th and Sun. June 7th *Community Education Center. 3500 Lancaster Ave, Philadelphia
Info : 215-387-1911 etc.series@yahoo.com*

Special Philadelphia High School for Girls Performance (*One Night Only) of Welsh’s latest large group work_Down to Earth._
Girls High Auditorium, 1400 West Olney Avenue, Philadelphia
Thurs. 5/14/09 at 7:00 pm. For further info call 215-267-5258 or 610-304-4515.
For several months now Stephen has been a special guest choreographer at Girls High magnet school where 50 students have shared in the development of Down to Earth. Choreographed in three sections, this piece raises awareness of rampant deforestation on our planet. Section 1 Clear Cut reveals the mechanized desturction of our trees. Section 2 Higher Ground suggests that there is a solution. Section 3 Down to Earth suggests that together we can save our forests if we hurry. With music ranging from Pink Floyd to the Red Hot Chili Peppers this message- driven work still demonstrates Welsh’s signature athletic style, group patterns and dramatic intensity.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE FACULTY DANCE CONCERT
Lang Performing Arts Center, 500 College Ave, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.
Sat. 2/14/09 at 8:00 pm. *Free Admission*
Hot on the heels of his critically acclaimed Philly Fringe ’08 piece, Phantom Troops, Welsh’s latest parody for solo dancer is a must see. Caught in the Crosshairs takes a playful look at how the iconic 007 always manages to escape. From smashmouth bondage and electroshock torture to ticking explosives and improbable shootouts, this re-imagined secret agent effortlessly dances his way from one harrowing situation to the next. Under the stunning command of soloist Eng Matthews, director of Eng and Friends Dance Company, Welsh’s signature athletic style and clever character- driven bits are brought to life. The choreography also touches on the broader themes of capture, humiliation and the need for escapist humor in these uncertain times.

ETC. PERFORMANCE SERIES featuring STEPHEN WELSH/SWERVE with Eastern University Dancers
Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia
Sat. 2/07/09 and Sun. 2/08/09 at 8:00 p.m.
If you caught the December ETC. show you saw the comic side of Stephen in his ingenious solo, Caught in the Crosshairs. This time around his fascination with abstract movement and intricate patterns takes the stage with Under the Microscope. The 12-person cast of talented Eastern University Dancers conjures images of cellular structures that randomly accumulate, disperse and then rearrange themselves. With a richly textured musical score by Philly composer John Glaubitz, this piece reveals a bedazzling world of wondrous complexity.

New York Times

Friday, Feb. 17, 1995
The Anna Sokolow 85th Birthday Gala on Wednesday was just that: a warm celebration of the life and work of one of American modern dance’s most significant choreographers and dancers.
Uta Hagen, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor and Gerald Arpino, like other friends and colleagues, paid tribute to Miss Sokolow’s influence and integrity at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College in Manhattan; Ruth W. Messinger, Manhattan Borough President, came on stage as well to proclaim Wednesday as Anna Sokolow Day.
The evening had an illuminating retrospective tone, given its rare film clips of Miss Sokolow as a dancer and the reminiscences of those who have known her since her professional debut with Martha Graham’s company in the late 1920’s and through her pioneering work in television and in movement training for actors (Julie Harris, Richard Boone, Jean Stapleton and Faye Dunaway, among others.)
…Mr. Arpino, the Joffrey Ballet’s artistic director, recalled how Miss Sokolow had donated her ballet Opus 65 to that company and Teo Macero, who composed its jazz score, spoke of her professionalism, which obviously paid off in the sharply etched portrait of disaffected youth in an excerpt, Quintet. Clarence Brooks, Jeff Schmidt, *Stephen Welsh *and Ming-Lung Yang as a slinking, gyrating gang and Eleanor Bunker as their cool, frizzy haired moll were terrific.
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Philadelphia City Paper

Oct 22-28, 1999
Welsh’s Doves and Nautical Dash asked the audience simply to sit back and enjoy. In Doves a pair of dancers in white body suits (Welsh and Christina Carrera) act like two birds flirting. Their fluttering arms and gracefully lifted legs are obviously drawn from bird behavior, but this is also an amusing and slightly subversive spoof of ballet postures. Nautical Dash, a playful romp based on water sports, also proved Welsh a clever choreographer with a penchant for quirky and acrobatic positions.

February 27 – March 5, 1998
As a solo performer, Stephen Welsh, the last choreographer on the program, knew how to work an audience. His entrance in Suite Aviation (set to the music of Bach and Vivaldi) was a study in beautifully subtle campiness as he perched on a window ledge and fluttered feathers demurely behind him.

February 20 – 26, 1998
In Welsh’s Doves (two excerpts from a work-in-progress titled Suite Aviation) he and Michelle Taddeo don full bodysuits and assume playful bird-like poses to the music of Vivaldi. There’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek puns on dance genres, especially ballet and Baroque. It’s still rough around the edges, but proved the best of this evening bunch. Deni Kasrel

Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 1997
The evening’s final selection, Interplay, by Stephen Welsh, was performed by a group of young dancers aged 12 through mid-teens. They did a fine job working through Welsh’s vigorous choreography, which mixed ritualistic moves with gymnastics.

May 16 – May 22, 1997
Stephen Welsh and Verve
Judging from Stephen Welsh’s choreography, it’s a safe bet to assume here’s a guy who gets bored easily. His dances are rife with quick changes in movement and momentum. He likes to create layers of activity. His dances often present a central point of interest complemented by one or more side pockets of action at various corners of the stage. Having so much going on at once is potentially distracting, but Welsh is careful to maintain a balance. Even if it doesn’t all make perfect sense – there are not always obvious connections from one phase to the next – things nevertheless seem to fit.
All of which makes his material both dynamic and provocative. He injects elements of theatricality and likes to showcase positions that obviously turn him on. Like lifting a partner and turning her upside down or having one dancer wrap his body around another. These are not new moves, of course, but Welsh has a flair for the off-killer.
The program of his ensemble, Verve, at Kumquat (formerly Group Motion Studio) was subtitled Swerve. He included a definition of the word “swerve” in the program: “to turn aside or be turned aside from a straight course. See syn[onym]s at depart, deviate, digress, stray, veer.” The material on the bill played upon those concepts.
For the first piece, Passage, Welsh, Joseph Cicala and Wil-Son Williams playfully deconstructed and reinvented athletic poses drawn from sports as means of contemplating male rites of passage. With Custom Wrapped, Welsh uses six female students from Stockton College to explore gestures rooted in classical Indian dance. Here the swerve was seen in Welsh’s reinterpretation of ritual aspects of this mode of dance as well as the Eastern aesthetic.
Urban Rotation, the strongest work of the evening, had the choreographer, Harold Sun and Melanie Savadore pacing in a turnstile. The point of the piece – life in the city can be robotic and isolating – is not new. Yet Welsh’s take on this topic is refreshing. The dancers’ moves indeed swerved to high effect, constantly putting kinks in what would otherwise be familiar setups. A series of solos injected a solid kick, especially Sun’s, a let-it-loose tour de force.
The evening’s final piece, Facings, was performed by John Blanchard, Linda Stuart, Savadore and Welsh. In it, both the women and men do their fair share of lifting partners. Facings suggestively toys with notions of technology and gender roles. Things begin with hugs and supportive poses, then work into more overt sexual pairings. Welsh stuffs a lot of ideas into the four-part work, including a funny segment in which two men participate in a Lamaze class.
Facings us ambitious. It’s not totally tight just yet, and the ending is abrupt. My hunch is it will evolve and become refined with more showings. Based on what Welsh showed on this program, that’s something to look forward to. Deni Kasrel
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May 9-15, 1997
…Welsh’s Voyage was awfully good; and Connor’s piece (perhaps because Cicala performed the solo) had its fine moments

May 9 – May 15, 1997
High point: Welsh’s Voyage, the evening’s liveliest piece, with a score featuring plenty of didgeridoo and movement that combined elements of gymnastics, hip-hop, ballet pas de deux, African dance and even some movements reminiscent of weightlifting. Voyage also showcased fine dancing by its three male dancers: Welsh, Cicala and guest artist Wil-Son Williams. Cicala has a light, careful way of turning, leaping, landing that reminds me somehow of velvet. And its always good to see Williams turn up on stage; he needs to tighten up his moves on the ground, but when he’s airborne, he soars. Lisa Coffman
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May 24 – May 31, 1996
Things are more than redeemed by the three dancers, each good in its own way, that make up the heart of the program. These, embodying different styles, show the company to splendid advantage. Despite its pretentious title, Stephen Welsh’s Fractured Orbits, set to “mouth music” by Toby Twining, is a most engaging piece for four dancers. Here Welsh, himself one of the foursome, pays homage to the Nikolais-Pilobolus wing of postmodern dance. Fractured Orbits, muscular and acrobatic, is often quite witty in its unexpected combinations. Especially noteworthy in it was Joseph Cicala, who went on to perform in each of the remaining four pieces and was nothing short of brilliant in all.
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Feb. 23-Mar.1, 1996
Choreographer Stephen Welsh presented an athletic quintet titled Ground Flight. The image of flight (or flight hampered) entered at times in small gestures or hovering leaps but was mainly expressed through the driving energy that pulsated throughout the piece. This high energy level, combined with the spatial complexity of the choreography, made the dance feel constrained by the small size of the CEC space.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

September 8, 2008
Manic Swell
We critics endure so much – head-banging music, late starts, strobe lights, unwelcome nudity, cell phones dropped in torrential rain, late nights in dangerous neighborhoods, hunger, thirst, deadlines – yet despite the fact we are paid less than postal workers, we deliver. Why?
Because we’re always mining for wonderful work finding it is like tripping over a gold nugget. Two pieces on Manic Swell’s program at Mandell Theater on Saturday made it worth braving Tropical Storm Hanna, uncannily alluded to in the Fringe blurb.
Lauren Mandilian choreographed Information Overload to first-rate music by John Avarese and Matthew Baker. She also created splendid animation with letters falling like rain down the screen and architectural lines intersecting each other. Five dancers did their turns nicely until a fatal error message appeared on the screen. In this dance there were no errors.
Regrettably, we don’t see enough of choreographer Stephen Welsh’s delightfully inventive work, His Phantom Troops deftly evoked the story of the U.S. Army’s 23 Special Unit, made up of artists who created fake battlefield decoys and other deceptive maneuvers during World War II. Welsh, a master at using props, had dancers Ray McCue rolling a tire and Joanna Wright exploring a vertical cargo net. Merilyn Jackson
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Feb. 7, 2006
…And Stephen Welsh’s good-natured Suite Aviation (1997), with six dancers in birdlike costumes soaring and fluttering to Vivaldi and Bach, started the evening on a lighthearted note.

February 20, 2002
Ballet on wheels: Troupe redefines dance
The two dancers glided slowly onstage and twirled playfully around each other in a pas de deux that culminated in a demanding, breathtaking… stand.
For the pair, who use wheelchairs, it was as high-flying a moment as any Baryshnikov leap.
“It’s a huge thing for them to be seen in their full glory out of the wheelchair,” Philadelphia choreographer Stephen Welsh said as he watched a final rehearsal of the piece he created call, Desert Bloom: An Offering of Hope.
It seems a simple thing to stand, to move a wheelchair here or there, to lift an arm, but for someone with cerebral palsy those small movements can be as challenging as a ballerina’s ‘grand jete’. That was obvious as Joseph Schmidt, 17, and Amy Levine, 17, who perform the sweet duet, struggled to raise themselves up with some help to ring two sets of wind chimes.
“It’s very, very exciting,” Schmidt said, looking weary after his second run through.
On Sunday, after weeks of learning their parts, not to mention avoiding traffic jams on stage, the troupe will perform the piece at the Painted Bride Art Center. It is one of several works in a program called HOPE2 that is inspired by students with disabilities.
The dance is a collaborative effort between the HMS School for Students with Cerebral Palsy and fusion2 dance company, both in University City. It is aimed at raising awareness of the creativity of children with special needs.
And creative they are. Limited in their movements, the students howled, rolled and shook their way through the 10-minute piece, accompanied by the low hum of a didgeridoo, an aboriginal tube-like instrument made from hollowed-out eucalyptus tree.
Even those simple acts, said Richard Magnuson, the school’s assistant coordinator of theraputic recreation, “are much more difficult tan any of us understand.”
What emerged from the collaboration was a better understanding on both sides of what it means to dance.
Sarah McCullough, 16, one of three fusion2 dancers in the show, said working with the HMS students made her feel “really alive.”
“It gives you a new perspective on dance and everything. It changes who you are; therefore, it changes how you dance,” said the lithe McCullough, who pranced through the rehearsal in athletic shoes.
At the first rehearsal, she said she was apprehensive and tired after a long week of school and dance classes. But once she saw how appreciative the HMS students were, “it made me feel really special. It was a joyous thing to do.”
The Masterman High School student was so moved by her work at HMS and dance workshop she gave at Shriner’s Hospital that she and another student choreographed a piece inspired by their experiences. That, too, will be on Sunday’s program.
Mirra Shapiro, 15, of Bala Cynwyd, called working with the students from HMS a “once-in-a-lifetime experience… We are the lucky ones to come across these kids.”
Those were the reactions that Gwendolyn Bye hoped for when she conceived the idea for the partnership. The owner of an eponymous dance school and artistic director of Dancefusion (fusion2 is the company’s preprofessional troupe), she wanted to broaden her students’ worlds beyond the mirrored walls of a dance studio.
“Dancers sometimes get isolated,” Bye said. “Their lives revolve around home, school and dance. It doesn’t prepare them for the parts of life that create a beautiful dancer and, most importantly, a healthy citizen.”
Working with disabled students “helps these young ladies who have so much richness in their lives get a better perspective,” said Bye, who cheered the dancers on with un-ballerina-like war whoops.
For the HMS students, some of whom are not able to talk or communicate with others, dancing is a way of expressing themselves, said Magnusom, who has used dance therapy at the school for two years.
“They loved working with the dancers and choreographer. It’s been a wonderful experience. They’re really working at following the movements and giving it their very best. It’s been very motivating.”
Though he had never worked with disabled students, Welsh, 39, developed a close rapport with his troupe.
It’s just added another whole dimension to my personal life. There’s been a lot of self-discovery along the way,” he said.
It was a humbling experience. “I had no training in the field. But what I did was be very patient in observing,” to find out what the students could and couldn’t do, said Welsh, who also teaches dance at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania.
He originally envisioned having wheelchairs make lots of patterns, but he quickly realized the students could not maneuver their chairs and needed help onstage.
“I thought they would have more independence,” he said.
To flesh out the desert theme, he had them write poems and do paintings, which are incorporated into the performance.
Because some had vision problems, he came up with the idea of them wearing mini-headlamps to maneuver around the dark stage. He also had some students pre-record their coyote howls, to be activated during the performance.
“Ready for your big desert howl?” Welsh asked Howard Anderson, 18, as he helped him with the recording and adjusted his costume, a gold metallic bandanna around his neck. Anderson let out a shriek.
The wheelchairs form a rolling corps de ballet of sorts. At the end of the dance, a bloom of hope is represented by bright metallic-colored flags that the HMS students hold and wave.
In a bit of improvisation, Anderson popped a wheelie in his electric chair.
And as they shook the flags and acknowledged the applause of teachers and friends, their transformation into dancers was complete. Kathy Boccella
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Sept. 17, 2001
Stephen Welsh and Joe Cicala of the choreographers group provided some good laughs with the cross- gendered The Princess and the Pea and Doggie Dreams, which they danced in Rocky-and-Bullwinkle boxer shorts on a mattress.
But as much as we needed laughter, meditation was also welcome. It came in the premiere of Welsh’s ritualistic Relinquish. He walked over large, squat candles, extinguishing all with his bare feet, saving the last to place at center stage. In white pants and a gauze over-shirt, he symbolized purity and peace, and his dance evoked an inner struggle for release.

June 1, 1998
Stephen Welsh set his Sleepless on six young dancers from the Gwendolyn Bye School. With darkened eyes they jangled in flannel jammies like vertical pistons. They daringly ratcheted up the hip-hop to Soul Coughing’s music and ably expressed the nervousness sleep-deprivation causes.

June 6, 1997
…Props propelled the evening: Revolving doors were simulated for Stephen Welsh’s Urban Rotation, an electric fan and yards of pearls for Nancy Golike’s brief solo Hothouse.
_Urban Rotation _danced by Welsh, Melanie Savadove and Harold Sun, is a long, searching piece whose slight steps and pauses were set to the music of Michael Nyman, Patti Smith and Tomandandy.

May 13, 1996
Dancefusion aims to entertain
A presentation by Dancefusion at Movement Theatre International over the weekend might aptly have been subtitled “A primer in modern dance history.”
The program’s five pieces ran the gamut. Two works – Between Worlds and Threnody – show obvious lineage to modern-dance pioneers Martha Graham and Jose Limon, judging from the emotionalism, archetypal postures and costumes.
The Evolution of Ragtime, a somewhat satirical work that merges dance with theatrical device, is choreographed by Anna Sokolow, a major contributor to modern dance for six decades.
Two other pieces, Stephen Welsh’s Fractured Orbits and Colin Connor’s Scales of Vertigo, are more avant garde. All of which makes for an electric evening that highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of this company.
On the plus side, Dancefusion is not afraid to be entertaining, something many modern ensembles forgo in favor of obtuse symbolic gesture and heady intellectualism.
Welsh’s Fractured Orbits goes so far as to spoof abstract movements popular in modern dance, as well as the cliches of ballet – most especially the idea of the gallant man and his dainty ballerina. This technically challenging work is carried out with the engaging panache by Christinia Carrera, Joseph Cicala, Christine Taylor and choreographer, Welsh.
It presents a quirky pastiche of partnering concepts. There are plenty of near misses when pairs attempt to get together in bizarre-looking match-ups and a hilarious bit where a woman swoons for her man by grabbing his thigh.
My one complaint about Fractured Orbits – and this holds for a few other works on the program, too – is that some scenarios are so repetitive that the novelty wears off and the whole piece winds up being too long.
Otherwise, Dancefusion’s assets outweigh its faults. Artistic director Gwendolyn Bye obviously has focused on dances of kinetic spatially interesting choreography.
With her own work, Between Worlds, another layer of artfulness comes from the patterns formed by female dancers in long dresses colored in rich shades of blue, purple or red. Deni Kasrel
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Philadelphia Weekly

May 14, 1997
…Take, for instance, the climax of the work called “Urban Rotation:” after a trio of blank- faced performers walked countless turns in the revolving door of the title—taking time out for dancier solos—the lights went out to reveal a matching glow in the dark design on the door frame and the dancers’ costumes. Around me I heard gasps of excitement, then big applause.

Phillyist

September 5 -7, 2008
Manic Swell
My festival calendar has been awfully low on dance this year, but I was happy to be able to fit Manic Swell, produced by various members of the Indigenous Pitch Dance Collective, into my schedule. Made up of six individual, disparate pieces, Manic Swell made for a satisfying, if uneven, hour and a half of dance. Highlights included Illadelphlave, who showcased impressive breakdancing skills, performed to an unlikely live accompaniment, and Underground DanceWorks’ multimedia Displacement of an Orb (Part One), which combined video with perfectly timed “ElectiFunk” choreography by former Phillyist V.I.P. Charles Tyson Jr. Tyson’s dancers are always impressively in sync with one another, especially compared with some of the other pieces in Manic Swell, in which one or two dancers always seemed a beat and a half behind. Admidst the evening’s ups and downs, there was, however, one shining star: Phantom Troops by Stephen Welsh/Swerve, a modern ballet in three parts dealing with the Army’s 23rd Special Unit, classified until the mid-90s, which was composed of artists, architects, and theatrical designers, and responsible for staging elaborate and realistic fake battles to distract the Nazis from the real troops moving through Europe. The piece was moving, amusing, and firmly rooted in its setting, even if all the soldiers were barefoot. It told just enough of the story that I wanted to hear more, and showed just enough impressive dance technique (including aerialism on an obstacle course net) that I briefly entertained the notion of taking up dance again. I definitely hope to see this company perform again in the future, whether they’re staging Phantom Troops or something else.

Seven Arts

March 1997
Emerging Choreographers
With several area colleges offering dance programs, and an abundance of independent choreographers and ensembles on the lookout for new talent, there’s a constant stream of fresh faces in our dance community. Some of those individuals are standouts. These four dancer/choreographers definitely merit “to watch for” designation…
Stephen Welsh has a knack for crafting demanding duets. He’s inventive, coming up with quirky match-ups – and sometimes mismatches. All are intended for us to see relationships in new ways. “I enjoy giving the audience a real kinetic ride. I want to keep what’s happening onstage energetic, and the picture very full.”
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