URBAN SCUBA to Land at Coppell Arts Center

Gravity has met its match. URBAN SCUBA fuses dance, circus, and death-defying invention into an electrifying, off-the-wall spectacle set to a pulsating original electro-rock score. The production hits the Coppell Arts Center stage Friday, October 16 at 8 PM and Saturday, October 17 at 2 PM.

In URBAN SCUBA, audiences are transported to the abandoned buildings and the cavernous substrata of an Any-City USA, where six fearless explorers delightfully re-imagine and re-purpose society's leftovers in playful and literally high-flying ways. Performers dance upon spinning ladders, swaying boiler pipes and circling bicycles all suspended in air, high dive into an actual dumpster, vertical dance on a giant chain-link fence, and swim like an aquarium fish on a garment rack. The result is not only an audience thrill-ride, but a transformative experience, prompting audiences to see their world with a new perspective—to take joy in finding alternate possibilities for their surroundings as well as all those things people keep stored away in basements and attics, deeply personal treasures of the ordinary awaiting a new life. 

Director/Choregorapher Brian Sanders is inspired by the inventiveness of shows like Bob Fosse's Dancin' and Pilobolus on Broadway.  After an extensive career at MOMIX, Sanders founded his own company, Archetype Dance Company, in 1992. His artistic goal was to make modern dance more accessible to a younger urban audience. Sanders changed the company's name in 1998 to JUNK, to reflect a growing interest in using found objects as props, enabling people to see creative possibilities in everyday life and showing that dance can grow out of almost anything. With more than 30 seasons of creativity, Sanders is nationally recognized and celebrated as a prolific artist—creating accessible, and awe-inducing performances, while continuing to push the boundaries of modern dance. Since 1999, when Sanders launched his first Philadelphia Fringe Festival production, Patio Plastico, Sanders has become recognized as a choreographic iconoclast who offers alternative perspectives to dance and is sought after by more traditional dance and arts organizations (including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Philadelphia Ballet), looking to present bold work.

Tickets are $58.82 and can be purchased at CoppellArtsCenter.org or through the Arts Center box office at 972-304-7047.