About
Photo by Tyson Crocket
Sarah is a movement and teaching artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is passionate about presence and aliveness while performing, and seeks to perform work which centers humanity and complexity. While she is invested in subtlety and nuance, she is a notably bold and expressive performer, using her theatrical and compositional intuition to inform her dynamic yet grounded choice making.
You may have seen her recently in “In C” — an improvisational music and dance performance directed by Helen Hatch of Hatch Dance and Berit Ahlgren of HoneyWorks. Earlier this year, she joined Taja Will, Mathew Janczewski, and a dynamic cast of powerhouse performers for “Here, Dear Life”. This work closed out the final program hosted by the Cowles Center prior to its temporary closure. Both of these works amplified an important element of Sarah’s values in performance: aliveness, compositional choice-making, and joy. Sarah hopes to continue to explore improvisation as performance.
She is back in the studio with Mathew Janczewski’s ARENA DANCES prepping for Monument, a collection of ARENA rep work. She will be dancing in “For Entertainment Purposes Only” — a reimagined excerpt of “Picturing That Day” (2017) — and “Navigations” which was originally set on Zenon Dance Company in 2003. She will continue to create with ARENA for a major new work, “Only the perverse fantasy can still save us” which will premier at Walker Art Center in 2025. Stay tuned for more information about Sarah’s 24-25 season, as new collaborations and debuts unfold.
Sarah is re-engaging and ramping up her work as a teaching artist and expanding into new domains. She currently offers contemporary classes at Zenon Dance School, Hothouse, and Minnesota Dance Theatre. Sarah has also completed 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and will begin her yoga teaching journey at Sunna - a new mindful movement studio founded by friend and fellow dancer/choreographer, Berit Ahlgren. Learn more about her perspective as a movement teacher and sign up for class here!
Sarah has just come off the heels of an exciting series of collaborations! After taking a hiatus from performing in fall 2023, Sarah quickly found herself busy in the spring. She kicked it off with the inaugural Mover’s Make, a new endeavor by Black Label Movement in which company movers have the opportunity to choreograph short works to stretch the idea of the “Black Label aesthetic.” Sarah performed in works by Hannah Albers, Kaitlyn Hawkins, Rachel Lieberman, and Javan Mngrezzo. Later in March, she joined the ensemble of “Here, Dear Life” led in collaboration by Taja Will and Mathew Jancxewski for the final performance at the Goodale Theater. Doma Dance Theater premiered a new dance film, “Mamko Moja L’uba,” featuring Sarah and Amanda Sachs. “Mamko Moja L’uba” explored source material from “Rock, Paper, Scissors” (2023), an evening length duet between Sarah and Nieya Amezquita, a process in which Sarah creatively contributed to over a 19 month arc. Closing out with a summer performance, Sarah was ecstatic to rejoin Hatch Dance and HoneyWorks for “In C,” the fourth installment of their beloved summer series, summerdance.
Originally from Virginia, Sarah began her dance training at Seven Hills Dance Studio. She then earned her B.A. as a double major in Dance and Mathematics at James Madison University. While studying performance, choreography, and mathematical theory, she toured with the Virginia Repertory Dance Company, JMU's pre-professional performance company, from 2016-2018. In 2016, Sarah spent the summer studying contemporary dance in London. She returned to England in 2018 to perform and teach with the Virginia Repertory Dance Company. As a senior, she was selected to serve as the co-director of the Associate Dance Ensemble, JMU's performance ensemble of freshmen dance majors. At the time of her graduation in 2018, she was awarded the School of Theatre and Dance’s “Performer of the Year” and was selected to perform “True Confessions: My Boyfriend, Mic”, a solo created in collaboration with Shane O’Hara, at the Richmond Dance Festival. That summer, she relocated to Minnesota to join the vibrant arts community of the Twin Cities.
Since moving to MN, Sarah has joined Black Label Movement (company mover from 2019-2023) and ARENA DANCES on a number of performances. With these organizations, Sarah has performed in the greater MN area, FL, NYC, and AZ* (cancelled due to COVID-19). Primarily a freelance artist, she has had the pleasure of performing in a variety of works choreographed by Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Berit Ahlgren, Carl Flink, Helen Hatch, Marisol Herling, Mathew Janczewski, Taja Will, and more. Sarah seeks to foster a variety of lasting, fruitful, collaborative relationships with choreographers.
In addition to her work as a performer, Sarah is an established and sought after teaching artist. She has offered guest contemporary classes at university dance programs in Minnesota, Virginia, North Carolina, and England. She has been a guest teacher with DanceON, ARENA DANCES’ residency-based, dance education program, bringing an immersive, high quality dance education to Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools. During her time with Black Label Movement, she was in residence at the Performing Institute of Minnesota with Black Label Movement, where she offered classes to young theater and dance students. As a guest teacher, she has been invited to give workshops for the Limón/ Black Label Twin Cities Intensive, ARENA’s Instinct Summer Dance Intensive, District Four High School Dance Festival* (canceled due to COVID-19), high school dance teams, and studios through Minnesota, Virginia, and New York.
Sarah seeks out vulnerable and honest dance experiences through performance, creation, and education. She is a highly collaborative artist and teacher. If you are interested in working with her, contact her here.