The Gate | 2003

Photo: Pedro Silva

Empty lot underneath the ben Franklin Bridge at 2nd and Race Streets
Philadelphia Fringe Festival

Philadelphia Inquirer
September 2, 2003
By Miriam Seidel

Gate is glowing

Dance with light and shadow

In The Gate, Brian Sanders delivers a spectacle, filled with memorable moments, that is garish, breathtaking and beautiful, sometimes all at once.

In an Old City parking lot in the shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge, Sanders and company (Jennifer Binford, Adrianna Carey and Hedy Wyland) climbed on, swung and leaped from the spare by dynamic metal stage, a dizzying jungle-gym of chain link, chains, zigzagging ladders and a trampoline. Dressed for a late summer evening – that is, hardly at all – they wowed the standing-room opening-night crowd, moving to a pounding techno-tribal sonic mélange that easily incorporated ambient traffic sounds.

Scenes I won’t forget: Binford balancing like a Tantric guardian on a glowing globe; two beings (Sanders and Binford) in gauzy, light-catching bodies with high bowed spines, each like a sail or a single wing; Sanders emerging upside-down from a glowing cocoon of netting high above the audience; the dancers’ giant shadows darting across the bridge high above.

And more I won’t give away. Sanders is at the top of his magic-making form here. Note to parents: There is some semi-nudity in this show.