With its classic tiled roof and soaring, arched windows, The Rotunda (4014 Walnut St.) sticks out amid the polished metal and stone that has become the west side of the intersection of 40th and Walnut Streets.

Built in 1911, the one-time Christian Science church turned neighborhood arts and culture venue is 100 years old this year. It’s celebrating with three days of performances by the wonderful Anne-Marie Mulgrew & Dancers Co., which has designed a production specifically for The Rotunda’s sanctuary space.

Most events at The Rotunda are held in a black-box theater in the rear part of the building that once served as a Sunday school when the building was a church. Occasionally, a performance warrants opening the much bigger sanctuary space, which sits under the buildings distinctive round roof.

This weekend’s unique performance, entitled Le Dada Va Gaga Dans 2011, is part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, which continues through May 1.

This description of the performance comes from the dance company’s website:

The program consists of a dozen short theatrical vignettes, dances and art installations inspired by the architecture of the space and the festival theme, Paris in 1911 moving towards 2011. Highlights include video projections on walls juxtaposed with live performance, a 2011 installation inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s notorious Etant Donnes, dancers clinging to doorways and walls, a pew dance, characters such as the lighted-hat lady who drops Kleenexs from the choir loft, a re-imagined version of Mulgrew’s 1992’s Earthborne featuring a woman on a ladder watching a stick dance, carousel like-dances using the fallen chandelier as a
sculpture, unexpected scenarios and audience interaction.

Performances on Friday and Saturday begin at 7:11 p.m. Sunday’s performance begins at 3:11 p.m. If you arrive 11 minutes before the show, you can watch a “pre-show” performance outside The Rotunda. There will also be refreshments and discussion in the black-box theater following the show.

Tickets are $15 General Admission, $10 Students/Seniors/DancePass holders. Tickets can be purchased on the PIFA website www.pifa.org, in person at the Kimmel Center Box Office, or by phone at 215-546-PIFA or 215-790-5800.

Below is an interview with The Rotunda’s director, Gina Renzi, about the building and this weekend’s performance.

Students at the Henry C. Lea School kicked of the Philadelphia Science Festival recently with a schoolwide jump out on the playground in an attempt to see if their movement would register on a seismograph.

We haven’t received word yet if the jump actually worked, but it’s fun to watch.

Full-day kindergarten, thousands of jobs and after-school programs are just a few of the items in serious jeopardy as The School District of Philadelphia looks for cuts to meet a massive budget shortfall.

The district released a preliminary budget yesterday (see the “budget in brief” below) that includes a $22 million cut to kindergarten funding, which if passed would eliminate full-day kindergarten at every school in the district. Remedial and summer reading programs, after-school programs will also be eliminated under the draft budget. Special education liaisons will be cut 77 percent. Students transportation and gifted programs will also be drastically reduced.

School class sizes will revert to the maximum allowed in union contracts, which is 30 for elementary school and 33 for higher grades. The district, which serves 155,000 students, estimates that this will lead to an increase of three or four students per class.

The budget shortfall is the result of a $292 million cut in state funds earmarked for the district.

Presented to the School Reform Commission yesterday, the preliminary budget has sparked outcry from politicians, parents and teacher organizations.

The Inquirer reports today that Third District Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who represents much of West Philadelphia, joined Councilmen Bill Green and Curtis Jones Jr. in adopting a resolution calling on Gov. Tom Corbett to continue to fund full-day kindergarten.

“You think we’re in trouble now…it would hurt families everywhere,” Blackwell said. “People won’t be able to work. It affects socialization and education of children.”

Full-day kindergarten began in Philadelphia in 1996 under then-Superintendent David Hornbeck. Hornbeck told the Inquirer that cuts to full-day kindergarten should not be under consideration.

“Based on evidence in Philadelphia and across the country, I can’t think of any decision that would be more ill-advised for Philadelphia’s children,” Hornbeck said. “I would probably approach the challenges they face by saying, ‘What’s the first thing I’m not going to cut,’ and it would be full-day kindergarten.”

The School Reform Commission has until May 31 to pass the budget.

Here is the “budget in brief,” which includes a summary of the cuts.

Preliminary Budget

A public discussion on race and racism at the University of Pennsylvania has emerged in recent days following an opinion piece in the Daily Pennsylvanian last week from a black student who was the victim of racial slurs by drunk white students.

The first line of student Christopher Abreu’s piece is perhaps the most damning for the university. He writes:

I’m no stranger to racism. Being a minority, it comes with the territory. However, because of a recent experience, I cannot in good faith recommend that minorities come to Penn.

City Paper expanded the story today and raised the issue of how Penn students deal with their surroundings in majority black West Philadelphia. The article doesn’t really dig too deeply into relations between students and the community. Any thoughts? Leave a comment below.

OK, so you’ve built a farm on a vacant lot near the 46th Street El station. How do you get water to it? If you’re the ingenious folks at the Walnut Hill Community Farm, you build a solar powered irrigation system.

You can get a close-up look at the system on Sunday, May 1 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and even help lay out the irrigation lines. No experience is necessary and all the tools you need will be provided.

The system collects stormwater from the roof of the El station and employs solar power to run a pump to get the water to the crops. A STAKE grant paid for the system.

Walnut Hill Community Farm started last spring. The land is leased from SEPTA and the organization Philly Rooted manages the farm in cooperation with the The Enterprise Center Community Development Center. A youth group, the Walnut Hill Growers’ Cooperative, runs the urban farm portion of the operation.

Update from Tag’s owner (May 31):

After countless prayers, hundreds of fliers, 34 days/nights of searching and trapping, dozens of false alarms and two OTHER little black kitties who now live here… TAG IS HOME!

If you’re around 44th and Baltimore keep an eye out for Tag, a lost black cat. Here’s a description from reader Linda Lee:

Taggart (“Tag”) escaped from his mom’s apartment yesterday (4/27) when movers left the doors open. Location 44th & Baltimore. He is a fixed and microchipped semi-feral (no ear tip), and is only friendly towards his mom. Call Sammi if you think you have seen him – 267-253-9973. Her email is paynekiller1969 — at — yahoo.com.