Fifty years of outdoor performances in Fairmount Park is not a minor institutional milestone, and the Highmark Mann Center is not treating it as one. The 50th anniversary season opens with Ballet X on June 4–5 — two nights of the Philadelphia company’s work on the stage that has hosted major live performance in this city since 1976. The summer unfolds from there with a program that uses the anniversary as an occasion for genuine artistic ambition rather than retrospective self-congratulation.
The season’s most significant single event is the world premiere concert on June 17 pairing The Philadelphia Orchestra with The Crossing, the Grammy Award-winning choir that has built one of the most distinctive identities in contemporary choral music. A world premiere at the Mann, with those two ensembles, in a Semiquincentennial summer, is the kind of programming that will still be discussed years from now. The full anniversary lineup extends through the summer with additional major performances yet to be announced.
Mann Center 50th Anniversary: Ballet X Opens the Summer Season June 4–5
Ballet X has been one of the more consistently interesting companies working in Philadelphia for more than a decade — contemporary choreography with real technical rigor, built for audiences that want to actually watch dancing rather than simply attend a cultural event. Their June 4–5 program at the Mann opens the anniversary season on the right foot: work made in Philadelphia, by Philadelphia artists, on a stage that has been a fixture of Philadelphia’s cultural summer since before most of the company’s dancers were born.
Tickets and the full 50th anniversary programming schedule are available at manncenter.org. The Mann Center for the Performing Arts is located at 5201 Parkside Avenue in Fairmount Park. Learn more at dosage MAGAZINE. Check the comments for the link to the full story.
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