Save the Date to celebrate BIODANCE’s 12th Anniversary at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage on May 17-20, 2018.
SPECIAL VIP PRE-SALE TICKETS on sale now for BIODANCE friends! Follow this link for the best prices and seats for the BIODANCE 12th Anniversary Season at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage May 17-19, 2018! BIODANCE celebrates with highlights from its dozen years as a Rochester community-based company. Repertory will include a BIODANCE premiere by Missy Pfohl Smith with motion capture imaging by W. Michelle Harris and music composed by Garret Reynolds, a reprise of excerpts of “Solo/Countersolo” by NYC-based choreographer Heidi Latsky, “Possible Side Effects” by local choreographer and BIODANCER Jeanne Schickler Compisi, and other favorites from the company’s repertory.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 30, 2018
MEDIA CONTACTS: Missy Pfohl Smith
Email: [email protected]t
Phone: 585-201-1002
12 for 12: Celebrating 12 Years of BIODANCE in Rochester
May 17, 18, and 19 at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage
75 Woodbury Blvd, Rochester, NY 14607
Rochester, NY- BIODANCE will be celebrating its 12th anniversary by presenting 12 performances in Rochester and Monroe county throughout 2018. As one of the highlights of 12 for 12: Celebrating 12 Years of BIODANCE in Rochester, BIODANCE will hold four concerts at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage on May 17-19, featuring a Rochester premiere, selected repertory from the company’s dozen years of work, and the revival of Heidi Latsky’s Solo Countersolo. Former BIODANCE member Courtney World will return to the stage for this anniversary celebration.
BIODANCE is excited to revive Solo Countersolo, a masterwork created by internationally renowned artist Heidi Latsky in 2013 for her NYC-based company. Solo Countersolo focuses on a soloist (Missy Pfohl Smith) as the counterpoint to the ensemble, weaving through a landscape of vigorously moving bodies to British composer Chris Brierley’s passionate score.
12 for 12 is made possible with support from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts at the Livingston Arts Center, a member supported organization.
Details:
12 for 12: Celebrating 12 years of BIODANCE in Rochester appears at Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Nextstage May 17, 18, and 19 at 7:00pm and May 19 at 2pm.
Ticket Information:
Geva Theatre Center Ticket Information: (585)-232-4382 or https://tickets.gevatheatre.org
BIODANCE Social Media: facebook.com/BIODANCE1 and Twitter: @BIODANCE1
Parking: Geva Theatre Center Parking Lot or street parking
Full Accessibility Provided at Geva Theatre Center
NOTE TO MEDIA: Interviews and photos are available upon request.
BIODANCE Dancers: Jeanne Schickler Compisi, Sarah Dearstyne, Sarah Johnson, Natalia Lisina, Nanako Horikawa Mandrino, Alaina Olivieri, Julie Schlafer Rossette, Jean Michael Rubingu, Missy Pfohl Smith, Courtney World
Biographies:
Choreographer, performer and collaborative artist, Missy Pfohl Smith directs the Program of Dance and Movement at University of Rochester and is artistic director for the contemporary repertory company, BIODANCE, based in Rochester, NY. Her work has continually sold out shows at Rochester Fringe, having been called “Gorgeous…astonishing…exceptional” and “a brilliantly crafted world of beauty, melody and calmness” by Rochester City News. She enjoys creating site specific work and recently created her second evening length show crafted for a 4 story planetarium in collaboration with a media artist, dancers, musicians and a visual artist. Missy’s viola and dance work with Bridget Kinneary is expanding to include new contemporary compositions by internationally known composers. Her choreography, performance and teaching has spanned across the US and internationally, most recently in Greece, Finland and Scotland. She is certified in Bill Evans Laban/Bartenieff-based pedagogy and also teaches choreography, dance on camera and contemporary dance and social justice. Before returning to Rochester in 2004, Smith was based in NYC for 12 years and performed and taught internationally with Randy James Dance Works and Paul Mosley, as well as apprenticing for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company.
BIODANCE is a non-profit contemporary dance company founded in 2002 that collaborates with multi-disciplinary artists and is the only true repertory company in Rochester, performing work by a roster of recognized choreographers including Missy Pfohl Smith, Bill Evans, Randy James, Ivy Baldwin, Jeanne Schickler Compisi, D. Chase Angier, Laura Regna and Courtney World. BIODANCE explores social, political and environmental issues through its works always through dance, sometimes with text, film, music, and ice cream. BIODANCE interacts with and outreaches to its community members and across the country in a variety of ways through performances, workshops, benefit concerts, interactive lecture-demonstrations and classes at venues such as Geva’s Nextstage, Hochstein Concert Hall, the Strasenburgh Planetarium, MUCCC and more. Over the past seven years, BIODANCE has been providing free dance and movement workshops to the Senior Center at Community Place of Greater Rochester. Recent collaborators have included the musical artists of Sound ExChange, digital media artist W. Michelle Harris, visual artist Allen C. Topolski, and the leading choral/orchestral ensemble Rochester Oratorio Society. BIODANCE has received Community Arts Organization Grants from the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester, New York State Council on the Arts and the NYS Legislature, from the Rochester Area Community Foundation, the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation, among other grants to create new work, to interact with its community and to produce various annual home performance seasons. City News chose BIODANCE two years in a row for a Best of Fringe Award in the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival.
Heidi Latsky, originally from Montreal, first received recognition as a celebrated principal dancer for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (1987-1993). Her experience there profoundly influenced her style and her philosophy of dance as she developed a reputation in her own right as a choreographer for stage, theater and film. In 1993, she received a commission from the Cannes International Dance Festival. Three years later, she was chosen to represent Canada at the Suzanne Dellal International Dance Competition in Tel Aviv and at Danse a Lille in France. Since then, Latsky has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe with her own company and as part of Goldhuber & Latsky (with former partner Lawrence Goldhuber) [1996-2000]. Latsky headed the Movement Department at The School for Film and Television from 1998-2005, where she developed her teaching practice: The Latsky Method. She has taught internationally throughout her career and her “Movement Portraits in Action” program has been implemented at the AIDS Service Center and The Creative Center in NYC. While working with Theater Director Mary Fulham, she received two Innovative Theater Award nominations. She served as choreographer on Academy Award nominated Katja Esson’s film “A Season of Madness” and as director and choreographer on Susan Murphy’s GIRL/GROUP at the Marquee, NYC (2003). In 2001, she founded her own company, Heidi Latsky Dance (HLD). During the fall of 2006, Latsky began an intensive period of creation with bi-lateral amputee, Lisa Bufano. This marked a significant shift of focus for HLD and a period of immense growth, during which she more fully developed the company’s mission and vision. HLD received an ARC grant through Pentacle that included mentoring Latsky for a period of 18 months, and in 2009 she was chosen by Creative Capital Foundation as one of four choreographers nationally to receive a three-year award for her evening-length work, GIMP. Her range of work is as varied as guest lecturing at Harvard University, performing with other Bill T Jones’ alumni in “SUMMER REUNION,” restaging a piece of Arnie Zane’s at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, creating a work at the Aaron Academy for high school students with learning disabilities, directing workshops in performance skills, performing in 2012’s TEDxWomen, and developing new works for her contemporaries like Li Chiao Ping as featured in several films by Douglas Rosenberg, including Seven Solos in 2012. Latsky has continued her work as an adjudicator of the American College Dance Festival Association’s (ACDFA) and serves on the Artist Advisory Board of Danspace Project. She has a BA in Psychology with Honors from Carleton University (1979), receiving the Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement and The Ottawa Ladies College Scholarship.
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