Architectural grande dame in Phila. marking 100 years

After 11 years, Gina Renzi can claim something not a lot of us can: She still finds joy when walking into work. Then again, she's responsible for booking more than 300 arts events annually in one of West Philadelphia's most monumental architectural creations - the Rotunda.

The University of Pennsylvania-owned property - designed as a church by the famed New York duo Carrere & Hastings - may be the hip host of the Live Arts Festival, Spiral Q Puppet Theater, and Andrew Repasky McElhinney's Video Vault screenings of avant-garde cinema classics.

But she's an old soul.

Turning 100 years old this year, the Rotunda will mark its centennial with three performances starting next Friday of Le Dada va Gaga dans 2011 by Anne-Marie Mulgrew's dance company, a piece meant to bring awareness to the building's architecture and history (to say nothing of its celebration of all things French and Lady Gaga).

"There is whimsy, unexpected outcomes, and stream of consciousness juxtaposed against the majestic yet aging space," says Mulgrew. The performance, part of the Paris-themed Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, was influenced by everything from the natural light filtering through the Rotunda's lattice-triptych-arched windows and its pine floors ("when you stomp on it, it makes sounds"), to the sense of peace, power, and harmony it provides. "The Rotunda," says Mulgrew, "became the stage and a star performer."

The Rotunda can use the attention.

Despite its full schedule of arts programs, nothing is as innovative as the building itself. Yet, except for academics and artists, most people today don't know its backstory, says George Thomas, an urban studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

And because the Rotunda is set back from the street, it's literally, if not figuratively, a hidden gem. Once discovered, it's a different story.

Grant Greapentrog attended services there when it was the First Church of Christ, Scientist. "It had an overwhelming awesomeness about it," he says. "Plus the Rotunda had the best fumed oak pews." As the church's message of healing spread to other neighborhoods, the congregation at 40th Street dwindled, until it was sold to Penn in 1995.