Shared Program: Returning and New Artists

Wednesday June 20 and Friday June 22 @ 8 PM

BIODANCE is a contemporary repertory dance company founded in 2002 that collaborates with multi-disciplinary artists in Rochester, performing work by a roster of recognized choreographers including Missy Pfohl Smith, Bill Evans, Heidi Latsky, Randy James, Ivy Baldwin, Jeanne Schickler Compisi, D. Chase Angier and more. BIODANCE explores social, political and environmental issues through its works and interacts with and outreaches to its own Rochester community members and inter/nationally. BIODANCE’s work directed by Missy Pfohl Smith, has sold out shows at Rochester Fringe for three years, including two evening length shows crafted for the 4-story Strasenburgh Planetarium in collaboration with W. Michelle Harris and live musicians. It was called "Gorgeous...astonishing...exceptional" and "a brilliantly crafted world of beauty, melody and calmness" by Rochester City News. BIODANCE is grateful for support from its individual contributors, Community Arts Organization Grants from the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester, New York State Council on the Arts and the NYS Legislature, administered by Livingston Arts, from the Rochester Area Community Foundation, the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation, among others. BIODANCE will perform 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. (On Friday, the solo excerpt will be performed.) (photo by Nadine Sherman)

Gina Bonati is a dancer, dance maker, musician, singer, pianist, composer, sound artist, painter, designer, librettist, poet, director, conductor, teacher…. She’s danced all kinds of dancing from ballet to Cunningham to contact improv, to various release techniques and on and on including being a go go dancer in infamous NY and Jersey bars (not for fun, for survival). That’s bar not barre. Gina holds a BFA from Juilliard in dance, an MFA in dance from Mills and an MFA in music from Mills. Soon she heads off to Santiago, Chile for a residency: she’ll teach voice and dance, singing and moving and mount a work for the stage with the workshop participants…in yelling and screaming, singing and stumbling, dancing and talking and doing absolutely nothing at all. All at the same time!!! (photo by Jeremy Ayers)

Joshua Lang is a dancer/ choreographer from Rochester, NY. He holds a BA from SUNY Geneseo. Lamia Dance is a group piece inspired by sights and sounds from a Moroccan street market.

Katherine Marino is a Rochester-based choreographer and performer with a BA in Dance from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She has performed with esteemed company PUSH Physical Theatre for the past three years, while concurrently fostering her own artistic endeavors in teaching, choreographing, hat juggling, contact improvisation, and loving life. In Playful Partner, Katherine explores what it means to dance alone and to dance with the world as your partner, mixing a quirky blend of contemporary dance, physical theatre, and hat juggling. Her duet, Surface, explores the concept of the fantastical perfect romance and the unspoken challenges of living up to this expectation.

Ruben T. Ornelas has been dancing for a minute. Thank you to Doug, John, Kevin, Karsten, Laurie, Cielo and all the artists who are participating in this festival; thanks as well to Cobblestone Arts Center. Ruben will be dancing to the poems of Luis Alberto Urrea and popular and traditional Mexican music. (photo by Annette Dragon)

Paula J. Peters, MFA, (Wed June 20 & Fri June 22) is an Assistant Professor of Dance at SUNY Fredonia. She has also taught at the University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts/Preparatory Dance, and Pacific Lutheran University. Her choreography has been presented by ACDA, Men In Dance, Cornish Dance Theater, Fredonia Dance Ensemble, the University of Washington, MuCCC Festival, and the BOOSTmeUp Festival. Prior to entering Academia, she danced professionally with Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle for fourteen years. More Than Once is a quartet which playfully investigates the intersection of popular dance moves from the past, with the gestural language of current movement trends.

Amy Sullivan became enamored with movement at a young age, first with gymnastics and then with dance. Her love of dance and teaching led her to pursue a BS in Childhood and Special Education from Roberts Wesleyan College and an MFA in Dance and Choreography from SUNY Brockport. At present, Ms. Sullivan pursues teaching, performance, and choreography in the community through her company, Stilla Dance, at Roberts Wesleyan College, and as a member of Rochester Dance Theater. Ms. Sullivan’s choreographed works are largely collaborative, and she enjoys working with an array of local visual artists and musicians. Her trio, The Light We Hold, articulates the light we hold from within, and the light that surrounds us in physical form through natural and artificial sources.

MaryLee Miller (Wednesday June 20) is a choreographer and dance educator from Rochester whose work has been performed in New York, Florida and California. Through her work she seeks to express the ritual of experience through movement and allow for the exploration of issues and experiences in a place where words are insufficient. She explores personal and social issues through modern/contemporary movement forms and enjoys collaboration with visual, sound and spoken word artists in some of her works. Set to music by Edward Elgar, Knot follows a woman as she unties the knot life has her in and comes to stand in her power confidently. (photo by Al Mosher)

Alaina Olivieri and Roy Wood (Wednesday June 20) are both free-lance movement artists. Alaina is currently a member of contemporary dance companies, BIODANCE (Missy Pfohl Smith) and Hanlon Dance & Company (Eran Hanlon) and is the Director of the Dance Studio at St. Peter's Community Arts Academy in Geneva, NY. Roy has danced with numerous dance companies including Park Avenue Dance (Christine Fendley) and Present Tense (Ann Wilcox) as well as creating independent dance dramas “Central Park in Dreamspace” and “W or Nothing.” He teaches contact improvisation at the University of Rochester. Two People is an exploration of the impact of gender expectations on movement and relationship, choreographed by Roy with Alaina’s assistance.