Performance Art

Richard Jordan is a sculptor who wanted to decry what he perceived to be the systematic exclusion of black artists like himself from mainstream culture. Such a statement can't be made through sculpture, so Jordan decided to convey his message through a performance piece. He called it Missing Transparencies, a reference to the fact that slides of his work are regularly misplaced by museums and galleries. The title implies that the slides are deliberately "lost" as part of an institutional conspiracy against minority artists.

The engaging premise of the multifaceted electronic arts festival called the Electrical Matter is that today's video, synthesized sound and other electronic media implicitly honor Benjamin Franklin the electrical experimenter. The festival's participating artists are free to choose whether to relate their commissioned works to Franklin's many talents. On the video/performance bill presented over the weekend at International House, co-produced by the Neighborhood Film and Video Project, Scott Alburger offered some Franklin- related meditations while Jessie Jane Lewis presented works that derived from her own concerns.

A grunting, chicken-cackling saxophone player; a monologist with a hundred voices; a spidery-thin dancer with red fingers; and a film about spinning - this is not a vaudeville show that MTI Tabernacle Theater is presenting through Sunday. The people in the program fall under the intentionally hazy rubric of performance art, and they all have found a steady outlet for their unique talents at an experimental theater in New York called P.S. 122. The show at MTI, called P.S. 122 Field Trips, offers a representative sampling of some of the big names on the fringe.

The students' project is ambitious: designing a giant Monopoly game, with real people moving around the board, to raise the community's awareness of homelessness. The idea behind the performance piece is to make people realize how easily the comfort and stability of a home can be lost. Last week, 15 of the Jenkintown High School students working on the project gathered for a brainstorming session with their art teacher, Virginia McKenna. To prepare for the performance in January, they had to answer questions such as these: Should images of homeless people be flashed by a hidden slide projector onto the game board or onto the scoreboard of the gymnasium, where the performance will take place?

When Karen Finley walked onstage at the Painted Bride Art Center two months ago, she shed most of her clothing during the course of her performance, smeared her body with chocolate and sprinkled it with alfalfa sprouts and glitter. The performance created an unholy mess. At first, the audience laughed, amused to see an adult playing with food the way kids are told never, never to do. But as Finley's multiple monologues continued, as she became infused with the personae of an abused woman, an alcoholic mother, a dying AIDS victim, the mess became emblematic of the mess American society has made of whole segments of the population.

Here's a quick multiple choice. Performance art is: (a) a woman who covers herself with chocolate, alfalfa sprouts and glitter while delivering high-intensity monologues on sexual abuse, alcoholism and AIDS. (b) a man who combines physical comedy with an existentialist edge in a breakneck series of solo character sketches. (c) an unruly art form that's been at the center of a national debate about public funding for the arts, threatening to bring down the National Endowment for the Arts since 1989, when Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.)

The Pew Charitable Trusts has named this year's recipients of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts - a $50,000 "no-strings-attached" grant that artists can spend in any way they choose. This year's recipients, selected from among nearly 300 aspirants, are: In performance art, David Brick, Andrew Simonet and Amy Smith, as a collaborative team (sharing $50,000); Tobin Rothlein; Robert Smythe; Geoffrey Sobelle. In poetry, Nava EtShalom, Jena Osman, Bob Perelman, Lamont Steptoe and Elaine Terranova.

ADULT FILM stars Marilyn Chambers, Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn all had varying degrees of success transitioning into mainstream acting careers, but Sasha Grey may soon be the first porn star to become a crossover star. One thing in her favor is that porn essentially is mainstream now - available in massive quantities on any home computer. Grey is also versatile and introspective - good qualities in an actress - and she's already starred in "The Girlfriend Experience," for director Steven Soderbergh.

They came from all over, from Pittsburgh and New York City, though mostly from Philadelphia. They danced till they were short of breath, then danced some more, eager to show they could combine attitude and personality with solid dance technique. Only the cr?me de la cr?me would be selected to join the Sixers' Dance Team. A total of 187 eager dancers showed up at 8 a.m. at Touch of Class Dance Studio in Broomall. They soon became 87. Then 45. Then the celebrity judges, including radio personalities and members of the Sixers front office, joined the dance instructors to select the team.

TRYING TO FIGURE OUT a "sculpture" that moves at 30th Street Station are Nicholas Thomson, 5, (left) and Elijah Florence, 6. The performance art, sponsored by the Painted Bride Art Center, was designed by Harold Olejarz and titled "The Commuters/Men in Suits. " Five people wore the sculpture suits and interacted with commuters yesterday.

Sunday Sound and vision The Pennsylvania Ballet presents Robert Weiss' Messiah , an interpretation of Handel's masterpiece, with guests the Philadelphia Singers featuring soloists Suzanne Ramo , soprano; Jamie Van Eyck , mezzo-soprano; Steve Sanders , tenor; and Levi Hernandez , bass. The program goes on at the Academy of Music , Broad and Locust Streets, at 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Friday, and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $20 to $140. Call 215-893-1999.

FOR THE PAST several months, South Broad Street passers-by couldn't miss the mountain of garbage on the lot next to Broad Street Ministry, between Spruce and Pine, which looked like a postapocalyptic art project. That's where members of the Miss Rockaway Armada collective were busy constructing boats and floats out of other people's trash for a mobile public art exhibit called "Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had. " Some of the structures are water-worthy and will set sail on the Schuylkill from the Walnut Street dock for a vaudeville-themed performance this weekend.

When Miranda July was in grade school, she'd strut around the yard at recess and say to her friends, "Dare me to do something - just dare me!" It wasn't that she was a "wild" kid, she explains. "It was more just wanting to be put in some absurd situation that would just be unthinkably shocking. And performative, somehow. " Like going up to the front of a movie theater, standing on the little stage and doing a soft-shoe. "I promptly got kicked out," she remembers, "and the movie hadn't really started yet. It was just previews.

It is time to celebrate the work of producer/DJ Alex Epton. Better known as XXXChange, Epton has done racy bracing remixes for alterna-heroes Bjork and Thom Yorke to great acclaim, as well as produce Kid Sister and his buds in Australia's disco-punk sensation The Death Set. More famously, the young Baltimore expatriate did time in Philadelphia as the music-making half of Spank Rock, the rude electronic rap outfit he shared with his buddy MC Naeem Juwan....

JENNY DRUMGOOLE is done with cream cheese. And anyone who attends her show, "Real Woman of Philadelphia," which opened Friday at Moore College of Art, might be finished with it, too. Drumgoole is a video artist who graduated from Yale's prestigious master of fine arts program. Her latest project was prompted by a "Real Women of Philadelphia" contest sponsored by Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Southern-fried Food Network cooking show host Paula Deen. Participants (ladies only, please)

Four days before opening night, the Performing Arts Youth Theatre company in Springfield Township, Delaware County, was having the kind of rehearsal that would make any observer doubt the show would go on. The White Rabbit was sitting in the audience when she should have been standing stage right. The Four and Six of Clubs missed their cues. The Mad Hatter forgot his stopwatch. Loretta Wehbe, 72, the company's cofounder, stood in the center of it all. Script in hand, she started doing what she's done for 27 years - making it work: "Louder.

ADULT FILM stars Marilyn Chambers, Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn all had varying degrees of success transitioning into mainstream acting careers, but Sasha Grey may soon be the first porn star to become a crossover star. One thing in her favor is that porn essentially is mainstream now - available in massive quantities on any home computer. Grey is also versatile and introspective - good qualities in an actress - and she's already starred in "The Girlfriend Experience," for director Steven Soderbergh.

To the soaring, campy sound of Queen's iconic "Flash," a dynamic group of teenagers - students, actors, and artists, most from the inner city - bursts running and laughing onto the scene like, well, a mob. Once they have established their stage - in this case, the subway concourse beside City Hall - they answer their cell phones in unison and say, "Tonight? Yeah, I'll be there. " So begins the student-written, publicly staged performance-art piece Flash! , inspired by flash mobs, the large gatherings of teenagers that turned violent several times this year on Philadelphia's streets.