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A mother snail, vampires, a ballet after-party, drumming brides, and lots more in this year’s fest
The month in Philly dance: Top dance picks for the 2026 Philly Fringe
Camille Bacon-Smith
Every year the Fringe Festival seems to get bigger—more than 330 shows are scheduled in venues across the city this year. Seventy-seven of them include dance, each as varied as the performers who create them. These are the ones that particularly caught my eye.
Intimate Experiences
In a sense, every show at Fringe is an intimate experience of an artist or company’s vision. But here are a few that seem to delve into the inner life of the artist in unique and personal ways.
Harper Wang: She Carries the Moon
Tuesday, September 8, 6pm
Online
I was happy to find a dance film for digital streaming, and the description of this one is irresistible: “Some emotions never become words. They stay in the body, returning with the wind, the tide and the fading light.” Sounds like poetry in movement.
Chris Davis: The 40-Year-Old Ballerino
September 12-27
Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Ave
Davis is a favorite here at BSR. (We reviewed the 2024 premiere of Ballerino here.) Audiences can count on him for mordant humor mixed with trenchant commentary on the state of the world and learning to dance in his 40s.
Katherine M Yatsko and Dancers: Slowly, Slowly, We Begin Again
Friday and Saturday, September 18 and 19, 7pm
Sunday, September 20, 3pm
&Space, 1021 Hamilton Street, Floor 3
Yatsko, a dancer and fabric artist, promises an immersive experience that conceptualizes new motherhood through the metaphor of a snail in its shell, slowly unspooling and packing up again around a new meaning of home. The metaphor resonates with my own long-ago experience.
Sharing Stories
The rest of my picks are as different from one another as can be, but there are all telling their stories as artists, which is why I love the Fringe.
Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths: Lunar Retreat
September 9-26
The Pearlstein Gallery, 3401 Filbert St
The Garden: River’s Edge was a highlight of the 2024 Fringe (reviewed here). So I am looking forward to Canuso’s new immersive meditation. Lunar Retreat focuses on the moon and its relationship with the ocean, and with our own planetary tides. I can’t wait.
Corps de Ballet PHL: Dancing in Yesterday’s Stage Makeup
Friday, September 11, 7:30pm
Saturday, September 12, 5pm and 8pm
Sunday, September 13, 2pm
&Space, 1021 Hamilton Street, Floor 3
If you hang around dancers, you quickly discover that when the show is over, they go out dancing! This performance is set as a dance party at a small apartment, where dancers explore their fantasies and realities through ballet.
Asha Bagal Kelly & Sabrina Caruso: My Carmilla
Friday, September 11, 5:30pm
Thursday, September 17, 5:30
Saturdays, September 19 and 26, 1pm
Plays and Players Skinner Studio, 1714 Delancey Street
Who doesn’t love a gothic vampire story! Kelly and Caruso recreate Le Fanu’s Victorian horror classic through a queer lens, with music and movement. I am not sure what movement means in this context, but I am pretty flexible when there are vampires involved.
Spilling Ink: Godavari: Who Am I?
Saturday, September 12, 2pm
Performance Garage, 1515 Brandywine Street
The artist draws on a relationship with the Godavari, the second largest river in India, for an immersive show about grief, desire, and memory, as told in Bharatanatyam dance. Young audiences will enjoy the mythic storytelling, while adults will share in the deeper meaning.
Descendanze: In Full Effect!
Saturday, September 12, 7pm
Sunday, September 13, 5pm
The Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts, 736 South Broad Street
This is another show for all ages, bringing together Native Nations Dance Theater and Afrodanze for a new piece titled The Butterfly Effect, a collaborative choreographic work that brings together contemporary dance and traditional Native American and African dance and culture.
five two dance company: If Ever
Friday, September 18, 7pm
Saturday, September 19, 6:30pm
Icebox Project Space Gallery, 1400 North American Street
if ever explores the emotions of intimate relationships, both platonic and romantic, in a series of vignettes. Choreographer Robert Rubama’s evocative movement style drew me to this one.
Casual Fifth: Here Come the Brides
Saturday, September 19, 3pm and 7pm
Sunday, September 20, 3pm
The Ginkgo Center 1316 S 9th St.
Casual Fifth brings together some of my favorite things: modern dance, taiko drumming, and something completely Fringe. It’s the co-directors’ 10th anniversary, so everyone will be dressed as brides. You couldn’t keep me away!
Urban Movement Arts: Flow State
Sunday, September 20, 4pm
First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street
UMA is one of those hotbeds of street dance in Philly, where creatives experiment and stretch the boundaries of vernacular Black dance. Flow presents the work of four local choreographers: Dylan Smythe, Chloe Marie, Kayliani Sood And Jonathan Van Arneman with their roots at UMA.
Dancefusion & Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble: Rooms/Threnody –Sokolow/Anthony
Friday, September 25, 7:30pm
Saturday, September 26, 3pm and 7:30pm
Performance Garage, 1515 Brandywine Street
Dancefusion founder Gwendolyn Bye is keeping the works of the women of modern dance alive. This year, she shares the bill with Sokolow Dance, presenting Mary Anthony’s 1956 Threnody, about loss and the sea, and Sokolow’s 1953 Rooms, about tenement life in an era of polio and the cold war. Anthony and Sokolow were friends in life, and it is a treat to see their works performed together now.
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