Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

The first fringe festival began in Edinburgh more than fifty years ago. Its mission was to showcase o smorgasbord of live performance that blurred the line between theater, dance, and music. Recently, New York City mounted its own fringe festival. Unlike its predecessors, the first annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival prioritized dancing. Philadelphia's festival revealed how effectively movement can communicate joy, suffering, and satire.

Min Tanaka's butoh production, The Poe Project (Stormy Membrane), transformed the Painted Bride Art Center's black box stage into a timeless space of dreaming. The predominantly American cast worked well in the twisted postures and low grunts of Tanaka's contemporary Japanese performance style. Every unsettling idea in the work was distilled to its movement essence. Without restaging any of the author's nineteenth-century classics, The Poe Project meditated on the horror and darkness in Edgar Allan Poe's writing.

In one disturbing movement vignette, two ghostly young women dressed in frilly Victorian nightgowns were menaced by a burly, slobbering, growling mon. When the man drew closer to the women (as if to rape them), they writhed, screamed, clawed, and scrambled away. But even this vignette's visceral impact could not top Tanaka's solos. At several points during the production, he slithered toward the audience, twitching, blinking, and contorting his arms and legs at outlandish angles. However, he never sacrificed subtlety in his dancing. At the beginning of the evening, clad in a dirty overcoat and hat, he moved like a scarecrow, breaking at each joint with every step he took. By the end of the performance, clad only in black trunks, he moved like water, his spine rippling with minuscule undulations.

On the next night of the festival, dancers from Pennsylvania Ballet experimented with comedy and nonballetic movement at the Painted Bride. They proved that even the most mainstream dance can be "fringe." Two works by Philadelphia-based modern choreographers stood out on this program. Paule Turner's You Must Be Certain of the Devil was a weird romantic spoof. Scantily clothed in a sheer black tutu, a frilly black lace bra, and super-long eyelashes, Turner bounded onto the stage (to Delibes) clutching a bucketful of apples. The entrance was pure, over-the-top gender confusion. Turner was joined by Anne White (in a traditional white tutu). It was hard to decipher the deep meaning behind the apple Ringing and bare-fist fighting, but for antiballet slapstick, this performance won the prize.

Eva Gholson's Coeli (Latin for "heaven") was a very brief, sensual exploration of lightness. With no added props or satirical effects, Coeli (set to music by Faure) depicted a solitary woman (Amanda Miller) caught up in a private joyful ritual, springing and reaching in quick, light, fluttering movements. Her filmy pale-blue slip of a gown curled around her legs as she swooped and circled across the stage. Her dance simply glowed. The evening also featured a truly comedic dancer, Christopher Roman. In his own Ballet-a-go-go (another spoof, this time of popular dancing), Roman's timing, supple spine, and rubbery face typified physical comedy. Sadly, Pennsylvania Ballet's efforts were sabotaged by missed lighting and sound cues, torn side curtains, and other poor production values.

On the last night of the festival, Melanie Stewart Dance Theater presented Perfect at the New Harmony Dance Warehouse. Blending live instrumental and vocal music with acting and dancing, Perfect reenacts an old and sad medieval European theatrical tradition called bouffon. Created in collaboration with Peter Clerke (director), Peter Livingstone (composer), Psydde Delicious (costumes), and the performers, Perfect takes the outrageous form of bouffon and teases every satirical possibility out of it. No element of contemporary society -- be it race, AIDS, or violence against women -- is left unsatirized.

In the hilarious, richly choreographed dream sequence, Paule Turner (the only African American in the cast) tries unsuccessfully to stay in step with the other performers. Even when one of the women (Julia Ritter) presses her sweaty body to him, and entices him with her sexual charms, he cannot bring himself to join the white community. The work as a whole was intricately crafted, with each comical idea dovetailing into the next.

With additional performances at more than twenty venues by both visiting and Philadelphia-based artists such as Don Froot, Doug Hamby, Grace Mi-He Lee, Eric Schoefer, and DJ Spooky, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival celebrated the diversity and vitality of the city's performing arts.