Celebrate Gardens at The World’s Largest Garden Party in June!

This ‘party’ lasts all month long. Visit a treehouse, attend a concert, have a picnic, sip wine at sunset… by Denise Cowie - 5/1/2008

And no matter how busy you are, you won’t have to — because this is not just one event but many.

Our party will continue at public gardens all over the region throughout the month of JUNE. Celebrate the variety our gardens have to offer!

Friday, June 20:

Chanticleer, 7 p.m.: Garden Party at Chanticleer – CONTINENTS: A Global Voyage. Performance by Music & Motion Dance in the Garden (company members pictured in previous performance at Gardens for Sculpture). Music & Motion Dance takes its audience on a journey of exotic lands around the world; “Continents” is a multi-textured celebration of rhythm that is both subtle and complex, yet primal as a heartbeat. Free with admission to the garden. www.chanticleer.org.

Posted on Fri, May. 9, 2008
Portfolio: Good-time gardens | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/09/2008

It’s being billed as “the world’s largest garden party,” but it’s really just a long list of gardening events in the Philadelphia area over the month of June. It’s also yet another illustration, a thoroughly splendid one, of this region’s status as one of the nation’s most important horticulture centers.

The “garden party” is being promoted by Greater Philadelphia Gardens, the nonprofit organization representing 29 public gardens and arboretums in the area. It used to be called the Gardens Collaborative.

Whatever you call it, its member gardens attract more than two million visitors a year, roughly double the draw for the Philadelphia Eagles last season.

So: Time out for a “garden party.”

It will have some standbys, such as the garden railway at Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill; the tea ceremony at Shofuso, the Japanese house in Fairmount Park; and the green-roof tours at Scott Arboretum in Swarthmore.

There will be some unusual attractions, too, such as the farmer’s market for heirloom produce and flowers grown at Wyck, the historic house museum in Germantown; the celebration of strawberries at Camden Children’s Garden, and the insect hunt in the meadow at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope.

Beyond this, several area gardens are positioning themselves as entertainment venues. For my money, nothing beats an evening in the garden (except maybe an afternoon in the garden), enjoying wine and jazz.

Not to be outdone, Chanticleer in Wayne hosts a performance by Music & Motion Dance called “Continents: A Global Voyage.” This company’s young dancers have performed to raise money and awareness for causes ranging from HIV-AIDS to hurricane victims.

They call what they’ll be doing at Chanticleer June 20 “a world fusion experiment.” I call it fun.

Information: www.greaterphiladelphiagardens.org.

- Virginia A. Smith

“In the beginning was the noise… and that noise begat rhythm, and rhythm begat everything else”

With the development of three dance pieces whose music and movement stems from rich traditional culture came a danceable, multi-textured celebration of rhythm. A spirit and pure joy of movement is enhanced by a fresh collaboration of tranced-out-grooves, elegant electronic programming and hypnotic tuned percussion. The group choreography is an acknowledgment of freedom and multi-culturalism.

We have selected only one dance piece for this country, featuring a trio. The dancers themselves have a single limit, in which they must remain in contact with each other at all times during the piece. Set to the guitar music of Smadj, there is a blending of acoustic and electronic sounds as well as cultures - Turkish, French, North African and Tunesian. It offers a transforming traditional jazz styles into eclectic sounds, a true meeting of culture and a source of many changes in our life.

In our exploration of India, music was selected that blended the soulful elegance of South Asia’s rich traditional and classical music heritage with the exuberance and limitless potential of modern Western electronica. Melding traditional Indian rhythms, African vocal styles, modern electronics, low-end dub bass and DJ breakbeats, this new music style from India allows for a genuine fusion of accompanying movement that pours energy into the air, pauses to meditate and then rushes forward again.

In ancient Japan, the taiko drum was a symbol of the rural community. It is said that the limits of a village were defined not by geography, but by the furthest distance at which the taiko could be heard. This trio of dance pieces created by Music & Motion, to the sound of taiko, have a universality about them, that will hopefully remind everyone of their own membership in a much larger global community. At its very core, the movement defined seeks to explore the primal source of rhythm that is inherently in each of us.

We have decided to explore three pieces of music from Turkey. They offer a subtle infusion of Eastern spiritual traditions of Sufi music with contemporary ambient sounds. We explored in studio, a unique mix of old and new, sacred and secular, East and West, as we created movement. The music selection is definitely modern, but grows out of the otherworldly heart of the sema ritual of the Whirling Dervishes. Turkish instruments like ney (reed flute) and kanun (zither) and Middle Eastern percussion are spiked with electronics.  The message of Rumi is clearly the force behind this presentation where the ultimate aim is to meet and be met at the point where one space becomes another.

Having concluded a successful season for 2007 with the performance of RED, we have entered back in to the studio to begin work on our new production, Continents, to preview in late Spring of 2008.

Continents is a multi-textured celebration of rhythm, that is both subtle and complex, yet primal as a heartbeat. Music & Motion literally takes its audiences on a journey of exotic lands around the world, with an exploration of movement from the sun-drenched African mesa; blends of eastern and western traditions in Turkey; the tabala beats of India; modern twists on the original Japanese Jomon culture; Euro-Mediterranean, ethno-techno blends; and rhythmic fusions of Tokelau, Tuvalu and Samoan cultures. This world fusion experiment acts as a catalyst for the exploration of movement and ideas that reflect our ever-changing global presence, from the historical to contemporary and the traditional to the eclectic. Continents communicates to its audiences on multiple dimensions, leading us on self-consciously inward journey in the seeking a universal ideal.