What Is The Fringe Festival?
Photo courtesy of The Geneseo Website
A moment of expression and joy at the Fringe Festival. One of Geneseo’s very own got to shine at the last years event.
The Rochester Fringe Festival in Rochester, New York, is here. The eye-catching and often niche displays and performances, including Geneseo’s dance ensembles, are a must-see! Geneseo’s dance program is renowned and thriving after 57 years of showstopping performances on campus. Artistic director Professor Jonette Lancos, alongside 20 student artists and faculty dance artists, have composed their performance around how “movement improvisations are structured into designed dances.”
This year’s show, titled Traits/Actions/Motions, showcases how creative ideas are translated into dance and creative movement. This Saturday they will perform numbers including Converging Forces by Morgan Comstock, Artistry in Motion by the competitive class of 2024, open call phrases by student choreographers, studies from the composition class of 2025, a tap solo by Allison Thomasheefski, Heal by Olivia Okoniewski, Classical Figures Bright and Dim by Professor Lancos, In Common LGB by Hettie Barhill and Professor Lancos, a side bend sequence from the ballet class, as well as a group improvisation. Admission to the 50-minute exhibit at Center Stage Theatre at the JCC is $5.
How did Fringe Fest come to be? In 1947, eight groups of performers crashed the Edinburgh International Festival as unofficial acts. The uninvited performances took place around the perimeter of the event, hence the name “Fringe Festival.” It was an act of rebellion against the normal and sparked the fringe movement across the United States and beyond. Today, there are at least 250 functioning Fringe Festivals in the world, including the Rochester Fringe Festival.
What does the Rochester Fringe Fest entail? Since 2012 the festival has hosted over 5,770 events, including aerialists who, two years in a row in 2012 and 2013, danced up the side of the 24-story Five Star Plaza high-rise, One of the festival’s highlights in recent years was EXIT by French company Cirque Inextremiste in 2023, featuring a full-sized hot air balloon, comedians, jugglers, and, of course, lots and lots of dance.
It displays the vast diversity in the performing arts as you pop in and out of different venues; you never know what might come next. The insane part is that it is a non-profit organization, making it one of a kind. You simply cannot find many free festivals like this in the United States, let alone one of this size. With it being one of the five most attended festivals in the world, totaling more than 89,000 attendees cumulatively in 2024, it is an opportunity you can not pass up.
One Geneseo student performing at the festival, Violet Rand, expressed her feelings about the event, saying, “I think it’s a great opportunity for us to showcase the thriving dance program we have here at Geneseo. This is because we will show not only pieces from our dance concerts, but also bits and pieces of what we do in our classes!” She is looking forward to revisiting her ballet piece from the spring semester for the chance to perform it one last time with her friends.
Although relatively obscure around campus, the Rochester Fringe Festival is something that is deeply tied to our school and students. Attending Fringe, you are not just going to an event—you are supporting actors and actresses, dancers and comedians, college students and professionals, as well as the historic legacy of the Fringe movement itself.