Not all fringe festivals reflect their host city, but the Philadelphia Fringe, dance division, certainly does. Representing the category of local genius made good, regular Ailey contributor Rennie Harris revisits a solo he conceived for Megan Bridge, cofounder of the Fishtown experimental performance space Fidget, a quarter century ago. Now evening-length and saturated with projected images, Beautiful Lies: Chapter 4 registers what has gone down in the meantime for Harris, Bridge, and this corrupt and tired world. The site-specific Bodies of Water, at the august Fairmount Water Works on the Schuykill River, recognizes how fresh water shapes Philadelphia, with one wide, wending river bordering the urban landscape and the other intesecting it. The family portrait in Xander Cobb’s Family Portrait/Lies of Meritocracy (“We yap endlessly about the commune utopia in Vermont. We meet strangers seeking collective living on FB marketplace…. What went down before the family photo was taken? What went down after?”) was probably snapped on a chosen family’s splintery porch off Clark Park. The audience-participatory Pennsylvania Semiconscious Liberation Army (“The audience will be presented with a sequence of ethical dilemmas and ‘vote with their feet’”) also brings Philly’s Wild West to mind, but for its decades-old anarchist bent. Finally, Corinne Jones’s danced deer anthology, 10-pointer, could well have emerged from the woods—near Mt. Airy, of course. —Apollinaire Scherr
Arts Intel Report
The Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2025

From Xander Cobb’s Family Portrait/Lies of Meritocracy.
When
Until Sept 28
Etc
Photo: Courtesy of Xander Cobb and The Philadelphia Fringe Festival