Leah Stein Dance Company at Shofuso - Japanese House and Garden in Philadelphia, September 2010. Collaboration with Tokyo artists Hideo Arai, Mika Kimula and longtime collaborators Roko Kawai and Toshi Makihara.

Battle Hymns premiered at the 23rd Street Armory in Philadelphia as part of the Hidden City Festival in June 2009. These excerpts are from the hour-long piece that featured composer David Lang's music (co-commissioned by MCC and LSDC), 9 LSDC dancers, 80 Mendelssohn Club singers and choreography by Leah Stein in the enormous space of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry which has operated continually since its founding in 1774. The performance took place throughout the site with audience moving from one side of the space to the other, surrounded by singers at one point. David Land's score included letters from the Civil War, words of Abraham Lincoln, and lyrics from Stephen Foster songs. The singers moved into many 'formations' and performed simple gestures throughout the piece.

GATE is a site-specific performance project at the 11-acre 'stabilized ruin' of Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia. The dance moved throughout the location with audience dividing into 2 and then 4 groups to follow 4 different dances. Drawing on the history and physical richness of the place, GATE integrates sound, gesture, and architectural space to capture the contradictions, tensions, interactions and emotions of prison life. The performance seeks to illuminate questions about confinement, who has control of who's inside, who's outside. GATE is inspired by the range of scales of the site from the small cells to the immense surrounding stone wall, 8 feet thick at the bottom), the acoustics of the site and the certain beauty the state of decay. GATE invites the audience into a multiplicity of perspectives of this complex site physically, historically, emotionally.

Collaboration with dancer/choreographer Leah Stein, Roko Kawai, musician Toshi Makihara, and Tokyo artists Hideo Arai and Mika Kimula on site at Izu House in Chihan-An, Ohito, Izu Peninsula, Japan.

Collaborative commissioned production with Mendelssohn Club Chorus and composer Pauline Oliveros performed in the Rotunda as part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Videography by Ellen Reynolds.