Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe Arrive 8/29

This year's Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe, running from August 29 through September 13, introduces the new Festival Bar, a stylized urban beer garden – designed and created specifically for the Festival – that will play host to thousands of festival-goers, artists and performers who will gather nightly for an after-hours chance to meet and mingle. Festival Bar visitors will be able to grab a beer or cocktail served up by Philly's favorite barman Fergus Carey, purchase food including Turkish dishes from Konak Restaurant and Bar, enjoy visual media installations designed and programmed by artist Lars Jan, dance to a line-up of some of the city's best DJs and even play arcade games like pinball and Wii Boxing.

The Festival Bar is located at 626 North 5th Street (Southwest corner of 5th and Fairmount Streets) and features on-site parking. Admission to the Festival Bar is free and 21+. Doors open at 10:00 p.m. nightly.

Lars Jan (designer/director of James Sugg's hit The Sea, Live Arts 2006) has gathered a wide variety of work that is programmed thematically from night to night with visual genres including Motion Graphics, Web-based Flash, Dance for the Camera, Machinima, Experimental Film/Video, Stop-Motion and Animation. Jan, whose work has been described as "eccentric, offbeat and entirely irresistible" (Philadelphia Weekly) will transform The Warehouse space into an imaginative artistic installation with video projections, including a series of cinematic mash-ups of ground-breaking films by masterful directors such as Kubrick, Miyazaki, Fellini and Hitchcock, among others.

"We are creating an environmental atmosphere that evolves nightly," said Jan. "Every night of the Festival Bar will have its own unique flavor and feature new material, from the music to the visuals."

Jan will also screen the works of other contemporary artists from the U.S. and abroad including Scott Pagano, Miwa Matreyek, Rafaël Rozendaal, Lewis Klahr and Francesca Penzani. Photographer Jacques-Jean Tiziou will also show his Festival photography with images updated daily.

Music at the Festival Bar includes some of the city's best party spinners on Fridays and Saturdays, including Mike T. and Billy W. of Robotique, Broadzilla DJs, Shawn Ryan of Hurrah, and Dev79, among others. Sundays through Thursdays, a host of Philadelphia artists such as Geoff Sobelle and Charlotte Ford, Thaddeus Phillips, Jim Sutcliffe, James Sugg, Nichole Canuso and Mike Kiley will add to the mix with playlists of their favorite tunes. Mike T., who is behind the popular DJ night Bleached Black, will also spin at the Philly Fringe show Unveiling Celebration with Megan Bridge Dance Trio, Tony Pirello, and John Schenk (Sept. 13, 5pm, Ruth Daneman Salon, 1728 East Passyunk).

The Festival Bar also houses a black box theater that will be home to the world premiere of The European Lesson from Jo Strømgren Kompani (Aug. 29 – 31 & Sept. 3 – 6) and the American premiere of louder by Verdensteatret (Sept. 11 – 13). Tickets for both shows are $25.

In The European Lesson (the Live Arts Festival's first international commission), internationally acclaimed Norwegian director/choreographer Jo Strømgren (The Convent, Live Arts 2006) works with an all-star cast of Philadelphia actors – the first time Strømgren has created a piece for an American cast. Created in residency with actors Aaron Cromie, Jeb Kreager, Sarah Sanford, Catharine Slusar and John Zak, The European Lesson, portrays an American anthropologist (Jeb Kreager) presenting a lecture on Slovakians and Slovak culture. With scenes from authentic Slovakian daily life, accompanied by simultaneous language translation and in-depth anthropological explanations, the piece features Strømgren's signature use of nonsense language.

In louder, the Bessie Award-winning, Oslo-based Verdensteatret, one of Europe's most innovative contemporary arts groups, will bring audiences into a highly experimental audiovisual installation that goes far beyond the boundaries of conventional performance. Last winter, Verdensteatret sailed Vietnam's Mekong Delta, the same river that plays the veins and arteries around the heart of darkness in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Inspired by their journey, louder is a symphonic collage of music and visual art: massive video projections of the Vietnamese countryside play as Soviet-era megaphones hurl sound in all directions. Gaping puppet jaws chase flocks of small metal figures across the room. An enormous mechanical spider looms over the scene. Using sculptural scenography, mesmerizing generators of sound and technological relics of a bygone era, Verdensteatret creates a spectacular universe that unites concert, art and theater.

PROGRAM INFO/TICKETS

The Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival runs from August 29 – September 13, 2008. Festival tickets are available for purchase now at www.livearts-fringe.org, or by visiting or calling the Box Office in the National Showroom Lot, outside of the National building at 113-131 North 2nd Street, or at (215) 413-1318. Tickets for most shows cost between $10 and $25. Some shows are free. This year, ticket buyers who purchase tickets to multiple shows can save 20% when they buy tickets to 2 or 3 shows and 25% for 4 or more shows. Students and Festival goers 25 and younger pay $15 for Live Arts Festival tickets and receive $5 off Philly Fringe tickets.

The Presenting Sponsor of the 2008 Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe is PNC Bank

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