Zon-Mai

Philadelphia LIve Arts & Philly Fringe
Former Pumping Station
140 North Columbus Blvd (at Race Street)
Philadelphia

Inside a former pumping station, opposite the new Race Street Pier, is a house of screens 20 feet high and wide, a massive multimedia installation named Zon-Mai, an idiom meaning, at home, elsewhere. Zon-Mai has no windows or doors, and is imagined as a home turned inside out. Projected on the screens are films of dancers performing in their homes--choreography set in their bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, under and above their furniture, by their windows and refrigerators--capturing fragments of dance and everyday life.

Traveling across numerous countries, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and filmmaker Gilles Delmas walked into the homes of 21 dancers, who have experienced migration and displacement, to find out what home means to them. Then Cherkaoui set choreography on the dancers within their houses and apartments and had it filmed. The installation, lit by these intimate moments within a large darkened space, takes on the sacred atmosphere of a church as visitors observe this incredible congregation of projected dancers performing within their most personal, intimate, and interior spaces.

September 2 to 17
Weekends and Labor Day: Noon to 8 p.m.
Weekdays: 5 to 8 p.m.

Gallery Opening: Thursday, September 8, 5 to 8 p.m.

Free/Ongoing