about
SARAH AIKEN is a Melbourne based teacher and choreographer from Bellingen NSW with an extensive body of work presented nationally and internationally. Solo and collaborative projects investigate assemblage, authorship, scale and the self, looking at the roles of audience, performer, subject and object and connecting tangibly with audiences, to consider performance as a site for empathy & exchange.
Her choreographic work includes Make Your Life Count (Artshouse, 2022), Demake/Demaster (SITU8 City-STRUT/TURA Liberty Theatre Perth), Piece (for Pieces) (PIECES- LGI and The Substation. 2019), Light, colour and quiet conversation (TO MAKE TO DO/Neon Park, Critical Mass/Brunswick Mechanics Institute 2018), SARAH AIKEN (Tools for Personal Expansion)(Keir Choreographic Award, 2016, Metro Arts 2017), SET (Dancehouse’s Housemate artist in residence, 2015, Dancemakers Toronto 2018), Three Short Dances (Les Plateaux de la Briqueterie. Paris 2015, Keir Choreographic Award, 2014), Set (Lucy Guerin Inc. Piece’s for Small Spaces, 2013, EDC Solo Festival of Dance 2014) as well as a range of short form and collaborative projects across music, live art, video, photography and visual arts.
Sarah’s performance credits include work by Luke George, Amrita Hepi, Shelley Lasica, Natalie Abbott, Rebecca Jensen, Jo Lloyd, Shian Law, Carlee Mellow, James Welsby, Brooke Stamp and Aphids, Deanne Butterworth/Linda Tegg, Ben Speth, Lee Serle, Atlanta Eke and Maria Hassabi. Video work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Sydney, APHIDS Contentious Buffet, Arts House, Dromana Drive In, Melbourne Fringe Online, HIAP Helsinki and The Substation.
Sarah is co-director of Deep Soulful Sweats working with Rebecca Jensen to create work that engages rigorously with participation, scale, waste and reckless formalism, and recycles content to consider materiality and how we come together. Works include What Am I Supposed To Do? (WAISTD) (Arts Centre Melbourne/Melbourne Fringe 2019), Underworld (Tempo Festival Online 2020, Melbourne Knowledge Week 2019, Supercell Festival Brisbane 2017, Darebin Arts 2017), OVERWORLD (Next Wave 2014, Dance Massive 2015) and the shape-shifting participatory project Deep Soulful Sweats (Castlemaine Festival, Immigration Museum, MEL&NYC, MPavilion, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Gasworks, Tempo Festival, Santarcangelo Festival, Brisbane Festival, PICA, Next Wave Festival, Dark Faux Mo)
In 2022 Sarah undertook residencies at HIAP, Finland and Dancenorth, Townsville as well as creating new work for stage, gallery screen and the edges of each. She is a grateful recipient of the Creative Victoria Creators Fund and the Chloe Munro Independent Artist Fellowship.