Sarah Michelson

Brooklyn, New York
Born 1964, Manchester, England
Choreographer

What is a dance? Why would I make one? How does a dance evolve? How do performers develop according to influence? How do genre and pedagogy create folds of thinking and how do those folds divide and unite members of the dance world and affect the way dances are created? Is this a subject?

I strive for truth and beauty as a dance maker, attempting to make work that risks rejection based on its aesthetics and at its deepest structural core denies safety in favor of trying to understand through action, honestly questioning what is the very nature and value of my dance-making. I am in a deep, loving argument with myself and with my community of peers about how to honor the form of dance in our time.

As a maker I seek both an unbridled experience in the theater and a deepening relationship to the emotional mathematics of form both on the stage and in our culture. I am also dedicated to working with youth, especially girls.

Serving the dance community for about a decade as a curator (now at The Kitchen) continues to be a deeply symbiotic relationship with making dances.

1991 M.F.A., Mills College
1985 Performance Diploma, Laban
1984 B.A., Literature, London University

 Associate Curator of Performance, The Kitchen, New York, NY

Yoga instructor, The Shala, New York, NY

SELECTED WORKS

2006 DOGS, commissioned and premiered by the Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; also performed at Tanz im August, The Hebbel Theater, Berlin, Germany

2005 Daylight, co-commissioned and premiered by Performance Space 122, New York, NY; also performed at On the Boards, Seattle, WA

2005 Daylight (for Minneapolis), commissioned and premiered by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

2005 Love is Everything, commissioned and premiered by Lyon Opera Ballet, Lyon, France

2003 Shadowmann, co-commissioned and premiered by The Kitchen and Performance Space 122, New York, NY; also performed at Tanz im August, Berlin, Germany; Zurich Theatrespektakel Festival, Zurich, Switzerland; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; SOMMER SZENE, Salzburg, Austria; The Cutting Edge Festival, Frankfurt, Germany

2001 Group Experience, commissioned and premiered by Performance Space 122, New York, NY; also performed at Zurcher Theaterspektakel, Zurich, Switzerland

2002 The Experts, commissioned by the White Oak Dance Project, Yulee, FL

2002 Grivdon at the Grivdon Concrete, commissioned and premiered by The Kitchen, New York, NY

2002 Grivdon at the Grivdon Lawn, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, MA

SELECTED AWARDS

2008, 2003, 2002 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Awards

2007, 2004 The MAP Fund Award

2006 Alpert Award in Dance

2006 Creative Capital Grant

Yasuko Yokoshi

Dance is a medium that I use to enhance presence.

I explore from minimum to extreme and all the shades and degrees in-between to locate the exact presence I want to be and I want to see on stage.
I am always regretting what I lack, or what I have in excess.

The communication that is the focus of my work is a tool I use to learn how to relate to others.

I am always aware of my relationship to other people, to society, to history, and to my own knowledge.

I inspire myself in order to fulfill the gap between knowing and not knowing.

I often find myself being wrong and failing—and I don't mind being wrong and failing as they help me to focus on what I am making. Creating frees me from being one place, one person, and one time.


Yasuko Yokoshi was born in Hiroshima, Japan.
She currently lives and works in New York City.

Yokoshi's works, which combine different disciplines and mediums, have been presented at the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, the Japan Society, P.S. 122, and abroad at the Festival a/d Werf (Holland), the Festival Sommer SIZEN (Austria) and at the Frascati Theater (Hollnad).

 Recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award (2008), and a BAXTen Award (2007). She is also the recipient of Creative Capital grant (2002), a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship (2004) and two "Bessie" awards for her choreography in Shuffle (2003) and what we when we (2006).

Yokoshi currently serves as an associated curator at The Kitchen and is a member of the Board of Directors of Movement Research. 

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