Age: 34
Hometown: Rochester
Current residence: North Winton Village
Occupation: Performer and teaching artist, director and co-founder of RocHaha Clown Festival and the Auguste Roost Theatre and Dance Studio
When Katherine Marino gets an idea, she usually makes it happen. Over the last decade, she’s woven herself into Rochester’s dance and theater fabric — creating multiple one‑woman performances, co‑founding RocHaha, the city’s first annual clown festival and now, opening a unique studio space in the largely repurposed post office on Cumberland Street. Marino’s grit and passion for clown and physical theater is echoed by an unmatched dedication to collaborate with the city’s broader performing arts community.
A Rochester native, Marino studied dance at the Hochstein School of Music under the late Christopher Morrison and completed her bachelor of arts degree at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. While teaching English in Argentina on a Fulbright Scholarship, Marino had her first taste of circus arts. Immersed in a different culture and a new art form, she fell in love with circus and physical theater.
Upon returning home to Rochester, Marino brought her new skillset and interests to PUSH Physical Theatre, which she toured and performed with for four years. It was during her years with PUSH that Marino met Ashley Jones, who is now a creative producer and performer with the company and Marino’s partner in launching RocHaha and the Auguste Roost studio on Cumberland.
Last September, the pair unveiled the RocHaha Clown Festival, a five‑day celebration that brought world‑class clown artists to Rochester for performances, workshops and community events.
“We wanted our community to experience high‑quality work by visiting artists and to take
clowning classes from people beyond the two of us,” Marino said. The duo’s shared vision led to a successful new festival, creating space for performers and audiences alike to laugh, experiment and get out of their comfort zones.
But as Marino and Jones organized RocHaha, they hit a familiar obstacle: a shortage of affordable, accessible rehearsal and teaching spaces. Most studios in Rochester are housed in academic institutions or cater exclusively to children’s dance classes. For artists like Marino and Jones, renting time in those spaces meant high fees, little administrative support and limited opportunity to build their own student base and income.
Their new space, Auguste Roost at 250 Cumberland St. — formerly the home of Rochester Dance Theatre — offers a solution to these problems. Jones and Marino have dedicated the studio to adult artists in physical theater, clowning and dance. Not only is the space unique in its focus on adults, but it also offers teaching artists the chance to co-produce workshops and classes. Marino and Jones share the financial risks and support teachers with administrative aspects.
“We’re hoping to have a space that people can feel like is their own,” said Marino. “Teaching artists can have more ownership, bring in their own students, and grow their practices.”
One of the first consistent classes offered at the Roost is a dance-conditioning series taught by Elyssia Primus, a local freelance dancer and licensed physical therapist. Primus recently secured ArtsBloom funding through the City of Rochester to launch a nine‑month, biweekly contemporary movement program hosted at the studio — offered free to local artists at a professional level.
“We have so much dance in the Rochester community, but unless you’re a company member with one of the local full-time groups, you don’t have consistent classes at your disposal,” said Primus.
She will enlist nine resident modern dance artists to lead workshops, forging new creative partnerships and giving freelancers reliable training. Primus has worked with Marino for many years throughout various artistic collaborations, and witnessed Marino’s career evolution firsthand.
“I thought it was a really brave transition, from contemporary dance to clowning,” Primus said. “Comedy is all about taking risks, because you have to be willing to fail to figure out what’s funny. And for dancers, failure is hard. We’re trained to keep everything perfect and precise. I admire her for taking risks.”
That spirit of risk‑taking propels Marino’s work onstage and off. She’s quick to admit when she doesn’t have all the answers and eager to seek out new knowledge. With her innate drive to learn and grow — both as an artist and entrepreneur — Marino strives to make the Rochester dance and theater space funnier and fuller as a community.
“Rochester is my home,” she said. “I want to have exciting shows and opportunities for the vibrant community of artists that live here.” rochaha.com/theroost
Sydney Burrows is a contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
