PIFA fundraising shy of budget, but shows will go on

When the third version of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, or PIFA, breaks out around town beginning April 8, it will represent a more modest version of the arts extravaganza that ended with 200,000 people thronging a Broad Street fair in April 2011.

The festival will be shorter - two weeks instead of the four weeks of 2011 and 2013. There will be fewer events - 60 this year versus 145 in 2011.

And the budget for the festival, organized and presented by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, is noticeably smaller - $4.5 million this year, down from 2013's $5.6 million, and $10 million in 2011.

That kickoff 2011 budget was the result of a $10 million donation from philanthropist Leonore Annenberg. But Annenberg has since passed away, and her foundation has departed the city for California.

The festival she inspired and seeded, however, continues.

With less than a week before its 2016 kickoff - the opening event is Article 13, a Mexican and French extravaganza that will unfold across two football fields' worth of Penn's Landing - fund-raising continues as well.

Anne Ewers, Kimmel president and chief executive, said Thursday that about $500,000 to $750,000 is still needed to cover festival activities.

"Final folks are making a decision," she said, regarding last-minute donors.

"The good news is that our board is so committed to and passionate about PIFA that quite a while ago they set aside contingency funds in case we fell short of the fund-raising goal. So we're covered either way."

She noted that the festival has not really been a revenue producer - many events are free.

"About 75 percent is free and open to the public," she said. "It really makes the arts accessible to everybody."

The Kimmel had hoped by now to have sold corporate naming rights as a long-term solution to the funding conundrum. But Ewers said achieving that has taken far longer than anticipated.

The Kimmel has now hired a naming-rights specialist, Washington-based Team Services, which is working on a strategy to reel in a corporate sugar daddy.

Ewers declined to say what sponsorship might cost.

In the past, the Kimmel's big resident companies have been a large part of the festival, providing local juice and Kimmel visibility.

This time around, there are some absences. The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and Opera Philadelphia are not participating.

Ewers said that "it's hard for resident companies to crank out something each year that directly ties to PIFA."

If the orchestra and ballet are taking breathers, Philadanco and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, both Kimmel residents, are most definitely in the mix. So are other residents: the Curtis Institute of Music and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

The perception that the Kimmel Center itself is bringing a lower profile to the festival could be stoked by the big kickoff event, Article 13, which takes place on the riverfront.

Ewers said the production served multiple festival purposes beyond its artistic ambition.

For one thing, she said, Article 13 will announce the festival's opening with very visible public flair - mirroring the huge PIFA Broad Street fair that will close the festival April 23.

While the production will not be on Broad Street, she suggested that it nevertheless demonstrates the Kimmel's reach.

Jay Wahl, Kimmel artistic director for programming and presentations, has been working with the creators of Article 13 - Compagnie Carabosse (France) and Teatro Linea de Sombra (Mexico) - for more than four years, he said.

The Kimmel has facilitated interviews with Philadelphia area immigrants. The performance is, in part, a memorial to migrants who have disappeared, re-embodying them in snatches of dialogue, stories, and images

Philadelphia memories of migration are incorporated directly into Article 13, Wahl said, an instance of what he calls "building on our own stories."

Incorporating Philadelphia elements into works initially conceived elsewhere represents an important collaborative element for several PIFA presentations, Wahl said.

He cited Vijay Iyers and Mike Ladd's multimedia show Holding It Down: The Veterans' Dreams Project, scheduled for April 22 at the Perelman Theater.

Iyers, a pianist and composer, and Ladd, a poet and librettist, have worked with local veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, making their experience part of the ongoing Dreams Project

"The philosophy of the festival has not changed," said Wahl. "We are still trying to focus on really bold new work."

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