Jeff Spevak

It took 4½ decades for Garth Fagan Dance to get around to writing a piece about Frederick Douglass. But the wait is nearly over.

The nationally recognized Rochester contemporary dance ensemble is airing a few sections of the new work on the iconic Rochester abolitionist at this year’s KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival. Along with right-hand man Norwood Pennewell’s new work in progress, “Distant Kin,” it’s clear that Garth Fagan Dance is not leaping on its laurels. 

No historical figure or cultural celebrity is safe from the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival.

Not the living: Cher, Tina Turner, Celine Dion, Liza Minnelli and Leontyne Price. Not the dead:

William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Josephine Baker, Oscar Wilde, Toulouse Lautrec, the drag queen Divine, the theologian and philosopher Teilhard de Charidin.

On a day where millions of Americans were frantically Googling “Mario Kart,” Unleashed! Improv was reminding its audience on Day Seven of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival that walking in on your parents while they’re having sex is comedy gold.

These KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival shows are like chasing lightning bugs across a hillside. For most of the shows, you get one, two, maybe three looks at them. And that’s it. They’re gone.

EstroFest claims to be “an equal-opportunity offender.” What does that mean? And what does it mean when the young, extraordinarily talented young woman who writes and stars in a one-person musical comedy, Mo-to-the-oncle, rolls out character after character that seem rooted in stereotypes?

Rochester’s PUSH Physical Theatre has established itself as one of the foundation acts of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival. It is essential viewing each year: What amazing stories will it tell, through the simple act of moving one’s body?

On Saturday, Day Four of the 11-day festival, PUSH took its audience to laughs, tears, and to the stars. True comedy carries with it elements of poignancy and sadness. And something grander than the joke.

It was the biggest gig in the short history of Massaoke, but the band’s expectations were low. Sure, it was the Glastonbury Festival. But the band was playing at 5 in the afternoon.

To its surprise, the show was packed. Except, “People were crying,” says drummer Mat Morrisroe. “They had been showing the Amy Winehouse documentary right before we played.”

Nevertheless, the band played on. And the crowd stayed. “We thought: This actually worked in front of a crowd of people,” keyboardist Mark Nilsson says.

Two days into the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival, and already we have a bold statement on these times. Words, and music, coming back to us from 150 years ago.

The dancer has a broken toe, and the law shook down the karaoke band at the Detroit airport.

Otherwise, it was business as unusual: Ethiopian child juggling! – on opening night of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival.

Fringe Festival: Day One

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s the grammatically casual philosophy as the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival opens Wednesday.