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Choreography

About

My choreography, presented in proscenium theatres, intimate studio settings, galleries, and other venues, embraces dancemaking and performance as a means of investigating perception and aesthetics, ushering performers and audiences toward altered modes of attention to ultimately propose other ways of being together. Through solo and ensemble works that span the whole range of the spectrum of fixity, my choreography aims to grow our receptivity and capacity for the unknown—to relax our grip on linear, narrative understanding and to instead prioritize kinesthetic connection, resonance, and reverie.

I have extensive experience setting work on and engaging in creative processes with undergraduate and graduate students, as well as working with professional performers, designers, and musicians.

Six Movements, in process | 2024

Six Movements, a collaborative choreographic work, explores relativity and relationality on non-narrative and non-human scales, positioning its two dancers and four musicians as energetic entities set into motion in a field of mutual implication. Composed in conversation with Philip Glass’s iconic String Quartet No. 3 and with live performance by the Wyoming-based Ventis Quartet, the duet follows the unspooling of gestural, spatial, and sonic energetic vectors, playing with alternately resisting and relinquishing oneself to the forces (movement, spatial, and sonic) already set a-spin in the performance space. What begins to bubble up is a sense of six “voices” playing the space together; a sense of ecological embeddedness and tender responsibility for space and other; a sense of stewardship of our shared moment. Three sections of Six Movements premiered at the University of Wyoming’s Radical Humanity concert in March 2024 and one section was performed at Colorado State University’s Body/Speak Festival in February 2024.

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Deux | 2022

Set to the music of Detroit-based techno artist Juan Atkins, Deux is an investigation of two-ness, exploring how a commitment to opposition might generate movement and change. In the piece, two performers cycle through a series of ever-evolving and ever-complexifying iterations of an original sequence of gestures, while experimenting with spatial and temporal alignment, apposition, and differentiation from one another. Created through the ProjectSpace Residency at Basin Arts Center. Presented by Basin Arts Center.

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Born of a Furious Brightness | 2019

This solo improvisation work considers rage, when functionally directed, as a catalyst with the power to transform the systems that substantiate our lived experience. Movement scores directed towards following muscular tension join recorded voice and music by Francisco Lopez to offer a self-portrait of confinement and ultimate release from one’s own neuromuscular patterning. Presented by 10forward.

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Delivered | 2019

In Delivered, an experiment in repetition, a solo dancer moves in relation to her onscreen double, evoking questions of materiality and temporality. Springing from a creative writing practice, the work explores the movement of memory and excavates a childhood experience of joy. Presented by the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought.

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Though The Days Grow Darker | 2018

Made with an ensemble of undergraduate dancers and community members, this piece summons an experience of abundance and vitality in a landscape of polarization. Presented by Marlboro College.

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Beata Viscera/The Beast | 2018

This solo investigates memory and the fluctuation of physical tone, employing video and live performance to investigate connections between body and environment, and the influence of past experiences on current perceptions and actions.

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Weft | 2017

In Weft, three dancers weave themselves into and out of relationship with one another in a choreographic exploration of Gile Deleuze's concept of folds.

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All Together | 2022

All Together, a piece made in collaboration with 11 undergraduate dancers, is a meditation on joy. Inspired by the writing of Ross Gay and Zadie Smith, the piece explores the relationship between joy and grief, the importance of companionship, and, ultimately, how we move through together. Presented by SmithArts and Smith College Department of Dance.

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Here, with you, there | 2020

Working with the poetry of Ross Gay, in conversation with my own experience as a triplet, this 15-minute sextet examines questions of intimacy and distance, exploring the experience of simultaneously feeling close to and far from another. Oriented around one diagonal in the performance space, a solo performer and an ensemble of five dancers continually re-encounter one another, threading and weaving themselves into relationships which materialize and disintegrate all in the same moment. Commissioned by Smith College Department of Dance. Presented by Five College Dance.

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Carried | 2019

Carried explores the experience of imaginative transport. Working with scores of visibility and invisibility in conversation with a video of cloud formations, the piece investigates the surging and receding of imagination into and out of legible form. Presented by the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought.

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Parted | 2019

Parted is an improvised solo with lighting design by Michael Abbatiello, which enlivens offstage theatre spaces and creates a landscape of shadow. Drawing on academic discourse about theconcept of “hauntings,” the work explores isolation and segmentation, looking at the larger implications for perception of self and space. Presented by APE and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought.

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a condition of we | 2018

a condition of we explores the aesthetic, imaginative, and ecological conditions of resonant experience, and questions the dichotomy between improvisation and set choreography. The piece takes a site-specific approach to the proscenium theatre , calling upon research into intentionally incomplete, unseen, and impermanent designs to activate ignored and unseen spaces in the theatre. Presented by Smith College Department of Dance.

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look/show | 2017

Influenced by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and discourse in feminist film theory including Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” this 30-minute performance installation employs video and live performance to illuminate the complex system of gazes at work in the act of spectatorship.

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You Will Surely Come | 2016

You Will Surely Come, a solo, is a meditation on inevitability and an experiment in how to find peace and presence in the face of forces beyond our control. Presented by ArtBark at Triskelion Arts.

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Commissions & Collaborations

Please reach out if you are interested in commissioning a work or collaborating on a project.

Sarah Lass

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