Mitchell Rose is an American director of short films known for comedic work and dance film. He began his career as a choreographer and performance artist and became known as "the dance world's Woody Allen" after being so dubbed by The New York Times. He then migrated to film and his works have won numerous awards, notably Elevator World, Modern Daydreams, and Learn to Speak Body. He tours a program called The Mitch Show which features his films and audience participation pieces.

Rose was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He entered Tufts University in Electrical Engineering but soon discovered Modern Dance and became the college's first dance major. Following graduation in 1973 he moved to New York City where he studied at the studios of Alwin Nikolais, Merce Cunningham, and Viola Farber. He formed the Mitchell Rose Dance Company blending movement, acting, comedy, text, and projected images. He received a grant from CETA and from 1978–1980 performed extensively in New York City theaters, schools, universities, museums, hospitals, and prisons.

From 1980–1991 he toured his work internationally in various forms: solo, duet (with Diane Epstein) and group. Places of performance included the Spoleto Festivals in the U.S. and Italy, Jacob's Pillow, and Joseph Papp’s New York Dance Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.

Rose created several audience participation pieces, including the 1985 work Walkpeople, in which seven audience volunteers received prerecorded choreographic instructions delivered from synchronized Walkman tape players worn by the performers.

Over the course of his dance career, he created 75 works, set pieces on 20 repertory and university dance companies, and was awarded five Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1991 Rose became a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute Conservatory. His MFA thesis, Helicopter, an urban drama, won seven festival awards including a CINE Golden Eagle.

In 2000, his animation Elevator World, a computer-animated essay on the spatial politics of elevating riding, won Grand Prize for Best Short at Slamdance Film Festival and was called “a computer masterpiece” by the CBS Evening News.

Also in 2000, Rose revisited dance when he received a fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts to explore ways of filming dance. During that fellowship he created Modern Daydreams, a series of four Chaplinesque films. One of these is Deere John in which a man dances a pas de deux with a 22-ton John Deere Excavator. Modern Daydreams, an example of Dance film (also called Videodance), won 19 film festival awards.