SKINK

Philadelphia City Paper

Arts Picks

June 28-July 5, 2001

Leaping Lizards!

Brian Sanders’ Skink is billed as "a new theatrical circus for kids," but given the sublime nuttiness of past Sanders entertainments — Patio Plastico, for instance, the Super Soaker hit of Fringe 1999 — I suspect that it won’t just be the under-12-year-old set collapsing in shrieks and giggles.

Sanders’ troupe of four will perform in the Groove Garden, a giant white tent best known as the outdoor party annex of the nightclub Shampoo. On weekend afternoons in late June and early July, however, the space usually filled with creatures of the night will groove to such three-ring-worthy attractions as a

10-foot-tall disco cow who tends toward incontinence, an old man who dances on his head, a gravity-defying, Vivaldi-conducting maestro and a tennis player "whose balls float" (hmmm, maybe this isn’t just a children’s show). There’s even a threat of indoor snow, plus a chance to get your picture taken with the Skink himself, a giant lizard.

Sanders, who’s won awards and critical acclaim for his choreography for MOMIX, the Prince Music Theater and Koresh Dance Company, is thrilled to be reaching a new, younger audience. "They’re the best critics around," he says. "They either run screaming in terror or they scream with laughter. They don’t sit and scratch their chins and go, ‘Interesting…’"