Contemporary Dance Wyoming and westFEST Intensive
This program is presented as part of westFEST, Westside Theater's interdisciplinary New Works Festival August 15th- 17th.
Friday, August 15th @ 7:30pm
Doors open at 7:00pm
Saturday, August 16th @ 2:00pm
Doors open at 1:30pm
This performance includes two artists/companies:
Michaela Ellingson & Fran Romo of Contemporary Dance Wyoming (Jackson, WY)
And
Participants in westFEST Intensive, Choreographed by Fran Romo and Rachel Oliver Young
westFEST Intensive Dancers include Bare Bait Dance Company, ARC, and professional dancers from Bozeman, Boise, and more!
Run Time: approx. 60 minutes
General Admission.
Standard $20.00
Student/Senior/Military $15.00
*westFEST Festival Pass includes all performances, workshops and events
Francesca Romo was born in London and knew she wanted to dance early in life. After graduating from the Royal Ballet School and London Contemporary Dance School, she danced for The Richard Alston Dance Company from 2003-2006. While on tour, she fell in love with the U.S., and moved to New York to dance with the Sean Curran Dance company from 2006-2007 She then went on to Co-found the Gallim Dance Company in 2007 where she was Associate Director until 2014. She has toured and created work with Andrea Miller having been involved with dance commissions including English National Ballet, Bern Ballet, Noord Nederland Dans 2, Nederlands Dans Theatre 2 and the Juilliard School. Gallim works have been presented by leading institutions and festivals around the world including , City Center, The Joyce, Jacob’s Pillow, BAM, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Teatre Grec of Barcelona, Teatro Nacional de Panamá, DanceHouse Vancouver, Spoleto Festival, and others.
Francesca has had the fortune of touring and working both internationally and nationally, and now resides at Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole where she dances, teaches,and mentors. Fran is an integral part of wellness programming, teaching Gyrotonic and Craniosacral work with both adults and infants. She was the recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council Grant in 2022.
Michaela Ellingson is a dancer, choreographer, educator and outdoor enthusiast. She is from and is currently based in Jackson, Wyoming. She received her BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase and MA from London Contemporary Dance School. In London she danced with EDge Postgraduate Company and also performed with multi-disciplinary companies Bittersuite and Flavour & Some. She is a member of Contemporary Dance Wyoming and has performed work by Babs Case, Francesca Romo, Gina Patterson, Lauren Edson, Andrea Miller, Robyn Mineko Wiliams and Luke Dakota Zender. She is a guest artist with David Dorfman Dance. She is the Junior Company Director at Dancers' Workshop and teaches Pilates. She was a recipient of the Wyoming Performing Arts Fellowship Grant in 2022.
Rachel Oliver Young is delighted to return to her Montana roots and join Bare Bait Dance Westside Theater. A dance artist who loves to explore intriguing gestures, task-oriented investigation, and full-bodied, lush virtuosity, Rachel has performed across the country and crafted work for women’s prisons, outside spaces, multi-media performance spaces, and traditional theaters.
For six years, Rachel served as the Education Director of Dance at Denver School of the Arts, where she had the privilege of guiding and choreographing on a generation of remarkably gifted young artists. Rachel’s choreographic work has travelled nationally and internationally, commissioned by Bare Bait Dance Company, Davis Contemporary Dance Company, and West Virginia Dance Company, and sponsored by the Atlas Black Box Experimental Studio in Boulder, CO. Her choreography has been selected for performance at WestFest Dance in New York, Performática in Mexico, in the Gala Performance at the National High School Dance Festival, and presented at WV Wesleyan University, the Philly Live Arts & Fringe (PA), Dixon Place (NY) and Triskelion Arts (NY).
Rachel holds an MFA in Dance, as an Arts and Sciences Fellow at CU-Boulder, where she was awarded the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Award and the Graduate Part-Time Instructor Teaching Excellence Award by The Graduate School at CU-Boulder. She was an artist-in-residence with Open AIR, based in Western Montana, collaborating with Joy French, director of Bare Bait Dance.