Sept. 14, 2021 at 8pm and September 18, 2021 at 6pm, Theatre @ Innovation Square, 131 Chestnut St. Rochester, NY.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                                                         

Sept. 9, 2021

MEDIA CONTACT: Missy Pfohl Smith

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 585-201-1002

www.biodance.org

Elemental Forces premieres at the new Theater @ Innovation Square

BIODANCE/Missy Pfohl Smith, W. Michelle Harris and Dave Rivello/Dave Rivello Ensemble collaborate in BIODANCE’s 10^th Fringe Show in the 10^th Rochester Fringe Festival!

ROCHESTER, NY— Choreographer Missy Pfohl Smith, director of BIODANCE, and media artist W. Michelle Harris return to the Keybank Rochester Fringe Festival again for an all new work, Elemental Forces, created for the 2021 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival. The same artistic collaboration who produced the sold-out phenomenons Anomaly, Labyrinth and Aria, will be joined by one of Rochester’s favorite jazz-inspired bands, the Dave Rivello Ensemble led by Eastman faculty member Dave Rivello. The live and in-person, family friendly show (kids 12 and under are free) features 12 musicians, 10 dancers and media projection that together create an interwoven tapestry of dance, sound, and media influenced by natural elements and forces now catapulting beyond human control. 

Elemental Forces will feature music composed by Dave Rivello, including the premiere of a new work and an improvisation. The choreography and imagery is all-new, and designed for this show that continues to consider the fragility of our earth in the face of climate change, a concern that the 2019 The Fragile Corridor also explored.  This multi-sensory performance will follow-up multiple sold-out shows from Fringes past will not only dynamically consider climate catastrophe as it parallels rising human-to-human conflicts in our world, but also will look to humanity for a future of hope. 

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 new project, “Dave Rivello and I have been talking about collaborating for years, and we are proud to get this significant show off the ground after over a year of existing as performing artists inside a tiny screen.” 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 Fringe.  Their 2018 Fringe premiere was called “an absolute masterpiece” by Rochester City News.  Smith says, “The opportunity to open the first season of the new Theater @ Innovation Square, and to celebrate our 10^th Fringe show together in the 10^th Anniversary Season of the Rochester Fringe Festival is meaningful in a lot of ways. I don’t think there are many artists who have performed and premiered works each and every year here at the Fringe in Rochester, and one year, we even carried out two totally different shows in different venues!”

There will be only two performances of Elemental Forces, and there is plenty of space to distance in the huge Theater @ Innovation Square (131 Chestnut St. Rochester, NY 14604)! Show are Thuesday, September 14 at 8pm and Saturday, September 18 at 6:00pm. Tickets are $14 General Admission, $10 for Students with ID, and Free for Children 12 and Under, available at https://rochesterfringe.com/tickets-and-shows/biodance-elemental-forces

BIODANCE website: www.biodance.org, Phone: (585)-201-1002

BIODANCE Social Media: facebook.com/BIODANCE1 and Twitter: @BIODANCE1

NOTE TO MEDIA: Interviews and photos are available upon request.

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. BIODANCE made their debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2017 to sold out houses, and has shared its work nationally and internationally. Visit Biodance.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, 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 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. 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 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 she has recently developed various new courses including one called Choreographic Voice: Dance and Social Justice in the UR Program of Dance. She has received various grants from The New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature, administered by the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester and Livingston Arts, a member supported organization. Smith and/or BIODANCE have also received support from The Max and Marian Farash Foundation, the Rochester Community Foundation, Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ Center for Teaching and Learning, among others. 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).

The Dave Rivello Ensemble was formed in 1993 by composer/conductor Dave Rivello as a vehicle for his original work and is celebrating 25 years as a band in Rochester, New York. The 12-piece ensemble includes a standard jazz rhythm section (piano, bass, drums) three reed players and six brass (including flugelhorn and tuba). The scope of Rivello’s music encompasses the jazz tradition and modern classical music, creating a unique blend of improvised and notated music. Rivello’s compositions have been referred to as ‘dreaming in color’. In addition to having held a steady gig for more than fourteen years, they have performed at Saint Peter’s church in New York City, the Rochester International Jazz Festival, performed with Bob Brookmeyer, Rich Perry and Dick Oatts, held a week long residency at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady New York, performed at Cornell University, Alfred University, the Monroe Community College Jazz Festival, the Coudersport Fine Arts Festival, perform an annual concert in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music, have appeared several times on the Bop Shop record store’s concert series, and WGMC’s ‘Meet The Artist’ series. The ensemble includes some of the best musicians in Rochester, and is continuing to be more in demand for festivals and clinics. Their debut recording, Facing The Mirror, received strong praise from reviewers in the United States, Italy and Ireland. The Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll chose Facing The Mirror as the Debut release of that year. Their second recording is in progress. Dave has recently launched a version of the band in New York City and a more electric version of the band called DRE | RED.

The Theater @ Innovation Square is Rochester’s new center for Performing Arts and Community Engagement. Formerly known as Xerox Auditorium, The Theater has been a much-loved space in Rochester for generations and will come alive once again with programming for all ages and demographics. As we emerge from this world-wide pandemic, one that has impacted every aspect of our lives, we at Innovation Arts Management look forward to what is ahead. Arts throughout the world have been devastated, but together we can rebuild and breath new life into our Rochester Arts Community. Visit our Events page to see a comprehensive calendar of what’s happening at The Theater and Subscribe now to stay up to date with new additions. Come show your support for Rochester’s artistic organizations who have been courageously and tirelessly pronouncing “the show must go on!” To get in touch with us directly, please visit the Contact & Hours page, or email The Theater: [email protected] 

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Bridging poetic dance, art, media and nature – safely at home!

Experience BIODANCE at Home from your own living room, backyard, or any comfortable spot from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

Selling out live shows at Edinburgh and Rochester Fringe, Rochester, NY-based multi-disciplinary dance company BIODANCE makes its Cincy debut with this virtual show that brings the outdoors in! Join dancers, musicians, a poet and a media artist for this collection of dances shot in gorgeous settings both natural and conceived. 31 minutes of escape!

Purchase your $15 Love Your Artist Ticket, or $10 Regular Ticket here: https://cincyfringe.com/biodance-at-home/

BIODANCE appears in the 20th Anniversary Season of DUMBO Dance Festival (Virtual 2021) in Program 5 on June 12 at 6pm.

Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at https://www.whitewavedance.org

A private Live Stream video link will be forwarded to you 1 hour before the start time, and you will have 5 hours to watch the full performance at your own leisure.

BIODANCE will be sharing a new 2021 edit of “Pilgrimage,” created during the Pandemic in 2020, choreographed and directed by Missy Pfohl Smith, with video effects by W. Michelle Harris, poetry by Lauren K. Alleyne, and music by Michael Wall.

“BIODANCE at Home” goes international! Tickets are FREE but includes a $2.70 AUD (equal to about $2.09 USD) processing fee to support the Adelaide Fringe.

To reserve: 
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/…/biodance-at-home… Choose any day between February 19 and March 6 to view the performance. Ticket holders will have 48 hours from the date selected to utilize the link to the show.

EDIT March 6, 2021: Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to make a difficult financial choice to end our participation in Adelaide Fringe a bit early. We are grateful to have brought our work to this amazing venue. If you were hoping to see it or have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]! We are happy to share our work directly with you.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 8, 2021
MEDIA CONTACT: Missy Pfohl Smith
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 585-201-1002
www.biodance.org

“BIODANCE at Home” Adelaide Fringe 2021Choreographer/director Missy Pfohl Smith, media artist W. Michelle Harris and poet Lauren K. Alleyne collaborate to bring virtual BIODANCE show to Australian Fringe. 

ROCHESTER, NY— The artistic duo that has brought sold-out shows to the Rochester Fringe Festival year after year is going international! This past September, BIODANCE choreographer/artistic director Missy Pfohl Smith, media artist W. Michelle Harris, and poet Lauren K. Alleyne of Trinidad and Tobago, premiered an onscreen dance for the 2020 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival. Success in Rochester inspired BIODANCE to bring the show to the international (virtual) stage through the 2021 annual Adelaide Fringe Festival. This virtual show will run daily from February 19 until March 28 accommodating audiences in all hemispheres. As in the Rochester premier, the presentation will include an excerpt from the stunning and renowned 2018 Fringe hit Aria, as well as an earlier BIODANCE short film Thou Hast Trespast (2010), a zany outdoor adventure featuring some of the original company members. Current BIODANCE member Natalia Lisina also contributes an original dance short entitled Lullaby.

The featured work “Pilgrimage” was created in 2020 during the pandemic, filmed on-location in a forgotten sculpture forest (exact location undisclosed), and inspired by the heart-jabbing poetry of Lauren K. Alleyne. In 2006, Alleyne and Pfohl Smith first began experimenting with joining poetry and dance through an interdisciplinary workshop. “Since we first met, Lauren has gone on to publish award winning collections of her activist poetry that cuts right through you as a reader and witness to injustice” shares Pfohl Smith. “Bringing this art and performance to homes throughout the world is an honor, and one bit of silver lining in this worldwide pandemic.” Alleyne’s voiceover of her poem Red Pilgrimage provides a soundscape for this work that thoughtfully grieves and beautifully hopes for a world where we can exist together in harmony without hate, without violence, and without fear. 

BIODANCE is known for its innovative multi-media performances, notably those in collaboration with media artist W. Michelle Harris. Creating three distinct evening length works designed for Rochester Museum and Science Center’s 4-story Strasenburgh Planetarium, BIODANCE now ventures into the virtual realm of art-making for the first time, keeping its dancers and multi-disciplinary artists in the creative process, and broadening its reach to homes all over the world. Although 2020 presented an unprecedented challenge for the performing arts, BIODANCE has always welcomed experimental forms of art and is thrilled to be part of the Adelaide Fringe. 

Tickets are FREE plus a $2.70 AUD ($2.09 USD) processing fee that supports the Adelaide Fringe and can be reserved ed at https://adelaidefringe.com.au/…/biodance-at-home…. Choose any day between February 19th and March 28th to view the performance. Ticket Holders will have 48 hours from the date and time selected to utilize the link to the show. BIODANCE gratefully accepts donations through a link provided and invites comments and questions for the artists, who will respond on our Facebook and Instagram pages. 

Website: www.biodance.org
Phone: (585) 201-1002
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BIODANCE1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biodance1/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/biodance
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BIODANCEChannel

NOTE TO MEDIA: Interviews and photos are available upon request.

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, Heidi Latsky, Jeanne Schickler Compisi, D. Chase Angier, Laura Regna and Courtney World. BIODANCE explores social, political, and environmental issues through its works and has sold out numerous shows at the Rochester Fringe Festival. 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 ten 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. City News chose BIODANCE two years in a row for a Best of Fringe Award in the Rochester Fringe Festival. Missy earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her BS from SUNY Brockport. She has recently developed various new courses including one called Choreographic Voice: Dance and Social Justice in the UR Program of Dance. She has received various grants from The New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature, administered by the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester and Livingston Arts, a member supported organization. Smith and/or BIODANCE have also received support from The Max and Marian Farash Foundation, the Rochester Community Foundation, Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ Center for Teaching and Learning, among others. www.biodance.org

Missy Pfohl Smith (Artistic Director/Choreographer, performer and collaborative artist) directs the Institute for the Performing Arts and 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. Smith 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. 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 4 shows, and another in 2019 titled The Fragile Corridor, playing to thousands of audience members and critical acclaim. Her choreography, performance and teaching has spanned across the US and internationally, most recently in Berlin, Greece, Finland and Scotland. Smith also made her debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2017 with collaborator and violist Bridget Kinneary to sold out houses. 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.

W. Michelle Harris (Media Artist) is an associate professor teaching New Media Interactive Development at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is also a member of Rochester’s WOC Art Collaborative. 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, the Baobab Cultural Center, 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). 

Lauren K. Alleyne (poet) hails from the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Her fiction, poetry and non-fiction have been widely published in journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic, Ms. Muse, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Interviewing the Caribbean, Crab Orchard Review, among many others. She is author of Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press, 2014) and Honeyfish (New Issues (US) & Peepal Tree (UK), 2019). Her work has been awarded many honors, most recently, the Phillip Freund Alumni Prize for Excellence in Publishing from Cornell University (2017), the Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press (2017), the Split This Rock Poetry Prize (2016), the Picador Guest Professorship in Literature at the University of Leipzig, Germany (2015), and an Iowa Arts Council Fellowship (2014). In 2015, the journal IthacaLit named its annual prize the Lauren K. Alleyne/Difficult Fruit Poetry Prize. Alleyne currently resides in Virginia, USA, where she is an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University, Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and Editor-in-Chief of The Fight & The Fiddle.

Natalia Lisina was born in Kazan, Russia. She received her bachelor’s degree in dance at Kazan State University of Culture and the Arts (2004 – 2009). In addition to the American Dance Festival, with a subsequent performance at the Joyce SoHo in New York, Natalia has participated in training workshops and festivals internationally (Paris, Moscow, Vilnius). Natalia continued her dance education at North Karelia College, in Outokumpu, Finland, subsequently spending a year in the United States in an intensive English program. In 2014 Natalia completed the Professional Training Program at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, working with teachers and choreographers such as Johanna Bergfelt, Susanna Hood, Patricia Miner, Sharon B. Moore, Darryl Tracy, and others, receiving the Kathryn Ash Scholarship during her final year. A post-graduation solo was created on her by choreographer Sharon B. Moore. In 2014-2015 she danced as a member of the chamber ballet Panther, in Kazan, Russia, under artistic director Nail Ibragimov. Currently she is working as a dance teacher in the Russian Centre “Sunshine,” is pursuing her MFA at The College at Brockport, and is a member of BIODANCE in Rochester, NY, USA. Natalia first began working with BIODANCE in 2012 during the creation of No Dancing Allowed under the direction of Missy Pfohl Smith. She returned to the company after completing the professional training program at Toronto Dance Theatre in 2014.
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