Philadanco celebrates its 50th anniversary two years late and looks to the future

Philadanco was just getting started on its 50th anniversary season when it — like so much else — was interrupted by COVID-19. So when the company opened at the Perelman Theater Friday night, it opted to revisit some of its highlights and gear up for the future.

It is now the company’s 52nd year and its 20th as the resident dance company of the Kimmel Cultural Campus. It has premiered so much new work over this time and danced the work of a variety of impressive choreographers.

For last weekend’s program, called “RE (Re-Flect/Re-Evaluate/Re-Generate),” the company performed favorites by Ray Mercer, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ulysses Dove, and Philly’s own Rennie Harris.

Mercer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner opened the program. The centerpiece of the stage was a large table that dancers performed in, on, and around to music by Craig Armstrong, Clint Mansell, Jack Hallam, and Bonji Duma. The table often served as sort of a large balance beam, with dancers performing pirouettes and other steps that seemed somewhat risky several feet off the ground, even if their space was a few square feet rather than inches wide.

The gasp-worthy moments came when the women flew off the table into the men’s arms, sometimes taking great trust falls backward from a standing position or leaping into a partner’s waiting arms.

The women of the company got little break during the performance, next shaking their booties for the entirety of Zollar’s The Walkin’, Talkin’, Signifying Blues Hips, Sacred Hips, Lowdown, Throwdown. Set to original music conceived by Zollar, it impressed by the mere stamina had for working their buns of steel. Particularly impressive with Kaylah Arielle, who danced a long solo called Battymoves (”batty” being Jamaican slang for “butt,” the program noted), using her glutes as sort of a percussion instrument for a good long time.

Nor did the dancers slow down for Dove’s Bad Blood, performed to music by Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel in white unitards. Here, they performed many fast pencil turns that made them look like they were hovering above the stage. They stretched, balanced, and again leaped with abandon into their partner’s arms.

Harris’ Wake Up was the one piece on the program with something of a story. It opens and ends with a tragedy and in between shows the moments just before the incident, when young people were enjoying a night of hip-hop dancing. Set to music by Darrin Ross, it again kept the dancers moving constantly.

One or two dragged a bit by the end, but mostly the speed, stamina, and clarity of dancing were exceptionally impressive.

As Friday’s performance was starting, founder and executive artistic adviser Joan Myers Brown was across Broad Street, receiving the Avenue of the Arts Visionary Award (along with BalletX founder Christine Cox). But Brown was in the building by the Zollar piece and came out and briefly shook her hips in her glittering formalwear and cane.

Fifty-two years later, the company is still on top of its game. But it only makes brief appearances at home in Philadelphia.