The 11th annual Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which runs from August 31 - September 15, will showcase a diverse and innovative program of performing arts from renowned international artists to acclaimed and up-and-coming U.S. and Philadelphia voices. Artists representing 7 countries and hailing from as far away as the Congo, Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Belgium will present U.S. Premieres while New York and Philadelphia artists will present World Premiere dance, theater, music, performance art and multi-media productions, making the Live Arts Festival a true international festival.

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which has garnered critical praise, national grants, and numerous awards, runs for 16 days in conjunction with the Philly Fringe in venues throughout the city. This year's Festival will feature 37 selected cutting-edge, boundary-breaking performing arts events, while the Philly Fringe, which provides opportunities for artists to present self-produced work, will feature nearly 170 artists. Together, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe draw over 45,000 people who come to be a part of "Festival time" in the city - to see innovative work, meet new people at the Late Night Cabaret, and interact with over 2,000 artists performing in over 1,200 performances.

International artists such as Faustin Linyekula/Les Studios Kabako of the Congo, Poland's Dada von Bzdulow Theatre, the Netherlands' Jérôme Meyer & Isabelle Chaffaud , and Vietnamese choreographer Ea Sola will cross borders, blend cultural boundaries, and bring a diverse range of world views to Philadelphia. Many celebrated and rising New York-based artists will have a strong presence at the 2007 Festival, including The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Tere O'Connor Dance, The Riot Group, Coco Fusco, and Cynthia Hopkins. Acclaimed Philadelphia artists include Pig Iron Theatre Company , New Paradise Laboratories, Charles Anderson, and The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental/Thaddeus Phillips.

Congolese choreographer and dancer Faustin Linyekula will present the U.S. Premiere of Festival of Lies, a dance and theater performance, visual installation, and community event all in one that addresses Linyekula's relationship to his country, whose history is constantly being re-written and whose name keeps changing. Other U.S. Premieres from international artists include Kamderdans from the Netherlands' Jérôme Meyer & Isabelle Chaffaud who will visit Philadelphia residences as audiences "order in" for dance performances in their own homes, and Map Me, a dance and video piece that uses the human form as a canvas from Belgium's Charlotte Vanden Eynde & Kurt Vandendriessche.

Visiting New York City artists include the influential and celebrated theater company The Wooster Group with their acclaimed production of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. Theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service will give Live Arts audiences an opportunity to see the East Coast Premiere of Gatz, a marathon presentation by a 13-member cast of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby.

Multi-award-winning New York choreographer Tere O'Connor will take advantage of Philadelphia's rich architecture to present the World Premiere of Rammed Earth, a site-specific work for five dancers that employs architecture as a fundamental force in the choreographic form. New York artist Coco Fusco's multi-media monologue A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America addresses the expanding role of American women in the War on Terror. Korean-born, NYC-based theater artist Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven will look at cultural identity through the Korean-American experience. New York's Nature Theater of Oklahoma will present No Dice , taking inspiration from over 100 hours of recorded telephone conversations to transform the everyday into a distinctly off-kilter theater experience.

New York's The Riot Group will present the World Premiere of Hearts of Man, written and directed by Adriano Shaplin, familiar to Philadelphia audiences as the playwright of Pig Iron Theatre Company's OBIE-winning Hell Meets Henry Halfway. Hearts of Man details the capture, indictment and defense of a computer sex predator. Pig Iron Theatre Company, a Philadelphia and Festival favorite, will radically rework Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in Isabella - a breathtaking spectacle of human puppetry set in a hospital morgue.

Exploring various crossroads of American life, many artists will take on race, politics, war, and American culture and rituals. Philadelphia's OBIE Award-winning New Paradise Laboratories will take a trip into the world of party rituals in the Philadelphia Premiere of BATCH: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle, a new work commissioned by the Humana Festival. The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental/Thaddeus Phillips will premiere Flamingo/Winnebago which contemplates the U.S.'s excessive use of energy and resources as an Indian immigrant and a young man searching for his past hit the roads and road-side attractions of the American West. Charles Anderson will debut a full production of Tar, a dance piece based on the "Tar Baby" folktale which appeared as an in-progress performance in the 2006 Festival.

Poland's Dada von Bzdulow Theatre will perform Several Witty Observations, a dance-theater exploration of the eccentric themes of celebrated playwright/novelist Witold Gombrowicz. Choreographer/performer Ea Sola - born in Vietnam and trained in Paris - will present Drought and Rain Vol. 2, a reflection on the memory of the Vietnam War by the generation living in a new Vietnam today, performed by National Ballet of Vietnam dancers with a traditional Vietnamese percussion ensemble. Bulgarian director Petar Todorov's Satores & Arepo Group will perform Delta, a physical theater work for three women.

NYC musician and theater artist Cynthia Hopkins will return to the Live Arts Festival with Must Don't Whip 'Um, a prequel to her celebrated Accidental Nostalgia (seen in the 2005 Festival) that depicts the farewell concert of a failed 1970s pop star. Brooklyn punk legends World/Inferno Friendship Society will perform the World Premiere of Fiend in Wien: Peter Lorre's Twentieth Century, a punk-rock operetta based on the life of stage and screen actor Peter Lorre. Philadelphia-based bowerbird will present a 3-day series of experimental, improvisational music.

Improvisational theater artist Bobbi Block (of ComedySportz and LunchLady Doris) will explore the unpredictable excitement of long-form improvisation with an ensemble of six professional, award-winning Philadelphia actors in LEAP: An Actor's Improv Experiment. Kaibutsu, the creators of Festival hits The Guided Tour and Northern Liberty, will present their take on Greek tragedy with Antigone Salon in a Rittenhouse Square hair salon.

The Festival will showcase local emerging theater artists including Brian Osborne (creator of last year's Philly Fringe show Bitch on Wheels) who will perform The Word, based on the life of the electrifying evangelist, Marjoe Gortner; Inis Nua Theatre Company (creators of last year's Fringe favorite Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco) with an Irish fable about tradition in a mad place, Trad; and Adrienne Mackey's Recitatif which delves into perceptions about race, based on a short story by Toni Morrison.

Marianela Boan, a Cuban choreographer who recently relocated to Philadelphia, will expose a couple's intimate life in the World Premiere of the dance and video installation Voyeur. Philadelphia's Devynn Emory will premiere Beast a dance and video duet, while SCRAP Performance Group will perform Between the Pages: Three sisters, a winged boy and a lighthouse in the stunning St. Andrew's Chapel in University City. Merián Soto will present States of Gravity & Light #2, part of a series of dances that has been developed in Philadelphia's Wissahickon Park over the past year.

Interactive dance pieces will be presented by Philadelphia's longest-running contemporary dance company, Group Motion Dance Company and Bessie award-winning Headlong Dance Theater. Group Motion's Sonic Dances is a traveling performance of music and movement through public Philly sites, while Headlong's Explanatorium will employ audience members' stories of the unexplainable as inspiration for improvised performances.

Free street events will be produced by The Brothers Cromie, who will stage AFOOT! A Treasure Hunt through some of Philadelphia's most vibrant streets, and Miro Dance Theatre who will kick off the Festival on First Friday with 50 drum kits, 15 dancers and 2 video artists in Principles of Uncertainty - a one-night-only street spectacle. Local radio producer David Witz has engaged local actors Karen Getz, Grace Gonglewski, Jennifer Childs, and many more in an online play on a "virtual stage," The Many Men of Martha Manning.

In-progress works will be seen from Philadelphia artists Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Kate Watson-Wallace, and Makoto Hirano/OMNiBUS.

The Festival continues to provide opportunities to meet and talk with artists about their work in the Festival Plus programming. Events include panel discussions with The Wooster Group, Faustin Linyekula, Charles Anderson, as well as a panel of local theater artists, a master class with Ea Sola, and several post-show talks.

The Late Night Cabaret is back, this year programmed by The Peek-a-Boo Revue's Scott Johnston and housed in a new venue, Club Polaris (formerly the Starlight Ballroom), located at 460 N. 9th Street. All Late Night Cabaret shows are free and 21+.

A full schedule of performance dates, times and locations will be announced soon.

PROGRAM INFO/TICKETS
The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe run from August 31 - September 15, 2007. Ticket prices range from free to $35, and can be purchased online beginning in early August at www.livearts-fringe.org, on or after August 20 th by calling (215) 413-1318 or by visiting the box office, located at The National (113-131 N. 2nd Street, between Arch and Race Streets). Festival guides which include dates, times, and venues for all performances, will be available at all festival venues and other locations throughout the city beginning August 3rd.

ABOUT THE FESTIVALS
The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe were originally founded in 1997 as the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Today, the Live Arts Festival is a series of selected cutting-edge, boundary-breaking performing arts events, created by some of the most renowned contemporary artists from our region and around the world. The Philly Fringe is a collective home for self-produced artists bringing their work to audiences in every conceivable form - in traditional and non-traditional venues, using new artistic forms and established ones, breaking rules or refining them.

To request press kits, photos, interviews, and more information please contact: Megan Wendell, Canary Promotion + Design, office: (215) 242-6393, email: megan@canarypromo.com