Michelle Mola / The Troupe is a band of contemporaries who approach improvisation as a central practice of individual creative discipline. They have consistently and independently produced contemporary dance with a small group of associates in film, fashion, live media and photography. For each original piece, the artists devise improvisations and multi-disciplinary processes to investigate a wide array of intensities; virtuosity in the physical, pictorial, and sonic. These artistic exchanges and related innovations in training form the core of their work. The Troupe is a rotating cast of performers selected specifically for each piece by directors Michelle Mola and Zack Winokur. Each performer makes a substantial personal and artistic contribution to the work.

Michelle Mola, a graduate of The North Carolina School of the Arts (2002) and The Juilliard School (BFA 2007), is the first dancer bestowed a fellowship in choreography and performance from the Annenberg Foundation. In 2002 she received a nomination for a Presidential Scholarship from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts. In 2005, Mola founded her first company, Public Dance Theater, which gave free performances, as well as offering no-fee dance classes in New York City, Canada, and Peru. In 2006, she received the Gluck Community Service Fellowship to combine dance and social outreach where she presented choreography in nursing homes, psychiatric wards, and most notably Rikers Island Maximum Security Prison. In 2008, she was awarded a young artists stipend from Dance Films Association. Her choreography has been seen at The Yard, Dixon Place, The Juilliard School, Ailey Citigroup Theater, PS 122 and The Joyce Theater. She has performed the choreography of Aszure Barton, Ohad Naharin, Susan Marshall, Jonah Bokaer and Elliot Feld. Mola has taught workshops on improvisation at Peridance Center and the International Refugee Committee in New York City.

Zack Winokur was born in Boston, Massachusetts where he began his dance training at Concord Academy under the direction of Richard Colton and Amy Spencer and later studied at The Juilliard School. His interests beyond dance have led him to collaborate with architects, musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers, and chefs. His choreography has been seen in New York at The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, The Park Avenue Armory, La MaMa, and The City University Graduate Center, in addition to the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and the Colony Theater in Miami. As a dancer, Winokur has performed in the companies of Karole Armitage, David Parker, and Moving Theater. He has performed in works by Jose Limon, Antony Tudor, Twyla Tharp, Daniel Nagrin, John Jasperse, and Michelle Mola. In 2009, Winokur co-directed and choreographed his first opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis at the Greenwich Music Festival. Winokur is co-director of The Troupe.