A dance performance is stepping out across the Drexel campus this weekend
"Sites of Dance" is organized like a campus tour, with audience groups splitting off to visit seven site-specific dances in a 90-minute rotation.
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One minute before showtime for the Sites of Dance premiere Thursday evening on the Drexel University campus, no one knew whether the outdoor performance would go on.
A storm threatened but the sky remained clear. The audience for the show, organized like a campus tour, had come with umbrellas and rain jackets.
Student volunteers divided showgoers into groups and set off from the Drexel Recreation Center at 33rd and Market Streets for a rotation through seven site-specific performances of student choreography scheduled to be danced at stops along 33rd Street — in gardens, courtyards, and the volleyball court.
“We’ll see how far we get,” one student guide told her group cheerfully. Not far, as things turned out.
The group crossed 33rd Street to the armory for the first number on their itinerary, Aislinn McGhee Hassrick’s Ying & Yang, danced by two trios as an exploration in contrast.
The trio on the right, arranged on different levels of a brick staircase and wearing fitted slate-colored shorts, twisted their limbs into harsh angles, flexing their feet, wrists, knees, and elbows in staccato bursts. The trio on the left — balanced on a bench lining a cool-gray façade and wearing rippling white skirts — delicately traced their fingertips through the air, creating soft arcs in slow motion.
In the middle of their performance, rain started to fall. The dancers continued without missing a beat, crunching their jazz shoes against the gritty concrete to complete elegant turns and even dropping to the ground in feline-like crawls along the dampening grass.
Then it was back across 33rd Street to the Alumni Garden for Alisia Lipsey’s Where Growth Happens, which didn’t get to happen. The sky let out a deep rumble, and for safety’s sake, everyone was sent home.
Audiences will have three additional opportunities this weekend to complete a full circuit of the 90-minute performance, directed by Olive Prince and set to original music by Christopher B. Farrell. Scheduled showtimes are 6:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Rain will not cancel performances, but thunderstorms will.
Tickets are $15 at drexelperformingarts.universitytickets.com. The Friday and Saturday shows have sold out.