Vanessa Erin Gross was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Philadelphia to study dance at the University of the Arts. While in school, she attended the America Dance Festival in 2013 and 2014, where she danced with artists from all over the world, including Leonie McDonagh and Jesse Zaritt. Before graduating with her BFA in 2015, she experimented with her first site specific work for her senior thesis, titled “a time and a place.” In this work, she was inspired by the feelings of being alone in a crowd and stripping away the “dancer” persona. She continued with these themes and performed her new piece “pause.” in SoLowFest 2016. She has performed with Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers, is dancing in new works with IIIsquared, and is a Front of House Manager at FringeArts.