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Fifth Annual Rochester Fringe Festival Opens Today

Speigeltent Cristal Palace
Erich Camping
Speigeltent Cristal Palace

The nine-day First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival kicks off today.

This is the fifth version of the annual event, which typically draws tens of thousands of people to dozens of indoor and outdoor venues around downtown Rochester.

Erica Fee, the founding producer of Fringe, says it has gained somewhat of a national reputation in recent years.

"We have had other fringe festivals tell us that they love what we're doing in Rochester,” she said. “In fact, they've kind of nicknamed it the 'Rochester model,' because what we're doing is a little bit different from what some of the other fringes are doing. For instance, San Diego always refers to the Rochester model and others are, I wouldn't say trying to copy, but perhaps are inspired by us."

Fee says the Rochester Fringe model allows the venues to curate half of the events to inspire creativity. The other half are curated by the festival itself.

There more than 500 performances this year, almost three times the number that were held in the festival's first year in 2012.

A highlight of opening weekend is the world renowned Streb Extreme Action Company.  There is one show Friday night and three on Saturday night at Parcel 5.

“They are a world renowned company; they're an extreme action dance company,” Fee said. “They do things that you didn't even know were possible with the human body, or basically you didn't think you could do it and stand up afterwards. A lot of falling from height, it's just in some ways, insane."

Rochester Fringe runs through next Saturday, September 24. For tickets and more information go to http://rochesterfringe.com/

Beth Adams joined WXXI as host of Morning Edition in 2012 after a more than two-decade radio career. She was the longtime host of the WHAM Morning News in Rochester. Her career also took her from radio stations in Elmira, New York, to Miami, Florida.