Inspired by—and through—dance

The 7th annual inspireDANCE Festival takes place January 25–30.

The Program of Dance and Movement kicks off the new year with its seventh annual inspireDANCE Festival. The festival, which begins Wednesday, January 25, and takes place over six days, will feature more than 30 master classes, workshops, and performances.

This year’s headliner is Dance Heginbotham, a rising contemporary dance company from New York City. The troupe has performed at such celebrated venues as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has shared the stage with such music icons as Shara Worden, Brooklyn Rider, and Alarm Will Sound, a 20-piece chamber orchestra ensemble that originated at the Eastman School of Music. The company, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary, will premiere a new work on Friday, January 27, at 8 p.m. at the River Campus’s Spurrier Dance Studio. Also on the bill is a work titled The Fandango, which will be accompanied by live music played by Eastman School students.

“Dance, by its nature, which must be performed by human beings, is always vital, and best experienced three-dimensionally, live,” says John Heginbotham, founder of the company, underscoring the importance of the art form. “No matter what sort of technology, or what technological advances we have, dance will always maintain this form, and that can be enjoyed by people no matter what era we’re in.”

Festival participants will have the opportunity to sample diverse offerings in dance instruction at the University, from West African, Middle Eastern, and Irish dance forms, to contemporary ballet and tap dance. Missy Pfohl Smith, director of the Program of Dance and Movement and the festival organizer, sees the event as an expressive, as well as an educational, opportunity.

“In these social and political times, certainly it is important to have introspection and serious conversation,” she says. “But we also must take the time to exuberantly celebrate difference and cultural diversity. What better way to do this than through dance?”

“The buzz and energy of a million classes going on at once is really exciting,” says Anne Harris Wilcox, a senior lecturer in dance at Rochester who will instruct on dance anatomy and kinesiology at the festival. “It’s phenomenal – there is something for your die hard dance enthusiasts to your new comers to dance,” she says.

A new element in this year’s festival is a “Swing Dance Stomp” to live music by the Roc City Jitterbugs. Attendees will be able to take a swing dance lesson prior to the event.

Other highlights include the annual inspireJAM, an all-style dance battle where performers of any dance form can enter to compete with some of the best “bboys” and “bgirls” in the region, which will take place Sunday, January 29. Competitors from Rochester as well as hip-hop dancers from Buffalo, Ithaca, and Toronto, will compete for a cash prize, starting at 2 p.m. in the May Room, Wilson Commons.

For a complete schedule of events, visit  http://www.sas.rochester.edu/dan/assets/pdf/inspireDANCE-schedule2017.pdf

About the Festival

The inspireDANCE Festival is the brainchild of Arielle Friedlander ’10, who was a participant in Rochester’s KEY (Kauffman Entrepreneurial Year) program, which provides students with an additional, fifth undergraduate year to carry out an entrepreneurial business venture.

She shared a simple idea with Program of Dance and Movement director Missy Pfohl Smith: to find a way to connect the more than 600 students involved in dance and movement groups and classes at the University of Rochester with each other, with the Program of Dance and Movement, and with the larger Rochester-area dance community.

Working together, Friedlander and the Program launched the inaugural inspireDANCE Festival in January 2010.