BIODANCE celebrates its 20th Anniversary in Rochester with special concerts at the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival – two nights only!
Sept. 16 and 24 at 8pm at School of the Arts – Allen Main Stage
ROCHESTER, NY— BIODANCE will perform special anniversary concerts Sept. 16 and 24 at 8pm at School of the Arts – Allen Main Stage, with a world premiere and repertory favorites. Current and returning performers and collaborators gather to celebrate, create, and remember some of the highlights of BIODANCE’s vibrant presence in the Rochester community. Choreography by artistic director Missy Pfohl Smith and special guests, with media by W. Michelle Harris, will highlight this incredible multi-disciplinary show. Smith and W. Michelle Harris, an Associate Professor of Interactive Games and Media at Rochester Institute for Technology, are no strangers to large-scale multi-media collaborations in The ESL Rochester Fringe Festival. Michelle’s work interacts and intersects with Smith’s swirling choreographic patterns, creating stunning innovation.
Excerpts from sold-out Fringe shows of the past will give audiences a sampler of the rich, socially conscious work of the company, including one from Anomaly (2013), the site-specific show at the Strasenburgh Planetarium that Eric Rezsnyak of City News said was “so lovely to behold that I found myself dreading its inevitable conclusion,” and another from Aria (2018) that Rebecca Rafferty of City News called “an absolute masterpiece.” The finale from Elemental Forces, an evening-length ode to the earth as it experiences catastrophic climate change choreographed by Pfohl Smith, will feature music composed by local favorite Dave Rivello, and gorgeous projection and media design by W. Michelle Harris. Two works will be presented by guest choreographers, including “That’s All Folks” by Johanna Hayes & Flannery Black-Ingersoll, and a world premiere from Ripp Greatbatch, a British choreographer and performer who splits his time between London and his new adopted home of Rochester.
Missy Pfohl Smith, who also directs the University of Rochester’s Institute for the Performing Arts and Program of Dance and Movement, shares her excitement about this milestone: “It is a gift to be able to both reflect back to BIODANCE’s wide-reaching history of performing in the community at all sorts of venues and unusual spaces, while also visioning ahead towards the future of this collaborative company of incredible artists and beautiful humans.”
There will be only two performances of BIODANCE’s 20th Anniversary, in the beautiful Allen Main Stage at School of the Arts, 45 Prince St., Rochester, NY 14607. Shows are Wednesday, September 16 and Thursday, September 24 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are $15 General Admission and are available at https://rochesterfringe.com/tickets-and-shows/biodances-20th-anniversary
Phone: (585)-201-1002
BIODANCE Social Media: facebook.com/BIODANCE1 and Twitter: @BIODANCE1
NOTE TO MEDIA: Interviews and photos are available upon request.
These concerts are made possible, in part, by the generous support of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, the Ames Amzalak Memorial Trust, and BIODANCE’s individual donors.
BIOGRAPHIES
BIODANCE is a Rochester-based repertory dance company under the direction of Missy Pfohl Smith, who also directs the University of Rochester Institute for the Performing Arts and the Program of Dance and Movement. BIODANCE collaborates with multi-disciplinary artists, such as W. Michelle Harris, an Associate Professor in Interactive Games and Media at RIT. Established in Rochester in 2006, BIODANCE works with some of the area’s top dance artists and collaborators, and has a focus on community-based work, offering many free and low-cost performances to neighborhoods across the city. The company has performed in every Rochester Fringe Festival since its inception, including as part of Grounded Aerial’s free headlining performance for 13,000 Rochester audience members. Its long-term history offering dance experiences to older adults at Community Place in Beechwood happily continues. Visit biodance.org and connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Instagram.
Missy Pfohl Smith (Artistic Director/Choreographer/Performer) is the founder and Artistic Director of BIODANCE, a non-profit contemporary dance company based in Rochester, and the Director of the University of Rochester Institute for the Performing Arts and the Program of Dance and Movement. Smith, a Lillian Fairchild Award-winner, enjoys collaborating with multi-disciplinary artists in music, visual art, sculpture, film and technology. She was selected for City News’ “The Rochester 10: Rochesterians doing great things behind the scenes” in 2015, and again for City Magazine in 2023. BIODANCE’s Anomaly, in collaboration with Sound ExChange and media artist W. Michelle Harris at the Strasenburgh Planetarium, won a 2013 Best of Fringe Festival award for Best Use of Venue and enjoyed another sold-out run in 2016. To follow up, Smith and Harris co-conceived a new work for the Planetarium in 2017 titled Labyrinth, which sold out its shows playing to over 1000 audience members and critical acclaim. In 2018, they were proud to collaborate with soprano Kearstin Piper Brown in an acclaimed production entitled Aria at the majestic Lyric Theater, for which critics said “Every bit of the performance was an absolute masterpiece.” In 2019, the duo collaborated with Michael Burritt and the Eastman Percussion Ensemble to premiere The Fragile Corridor, again selling out at the Planetarium. Based in NYC for 12 years, Smith performed and toured with Randy James Dance Works as a founding company member from 1993-2003, with Paul Mosley from 1997-2004, and with Philippa Kaye Company. She also worked as an apprentice for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Missy has performed and taught across the U.S. and in Greece, Finland, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia & Japan. Missy earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her BS from SUNY Brockport, and is pursuing her PhD at University of Rochester. Hercommunity-engaged teaching is at the center of her dissertation, which looks at how dancing in community can support recovery for women in transitional housing. www.biodance.org
W. Michelle Harris (Media Artist) is a media artist and a New Media professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is also a member of Rochester’s WOC Art Collective. Her video installation work (solo and collaborative) has been shown at such diverse venues as the ACM SIGGRAPH, World Maker Faire, and INST-INT, as well as regional venues such as Gallery 74, Community Folk Art Center, Schwienfurth Memorial, and Squeaky Wheel. She has done live-mixed visuals for performances in collaboration with Juanita Suarez, fivebyfive, Dave Rivello, Reenah Golden, Sound ExChange orchestra, and most prolifically, BIODANCE. Michelle has been an ongoing collaborator with Missy Pfohl Smith and BIODANCE since 2013. She received her BS from Carnegie Mellon University, and a MPS from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (where she had the honor of interning with Troika Ranch)
