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.
Choreographic work includes Greenroom Award winning Make Your Life Count (Arts House 2022, PICA, Platform Arts and Gertrude Projection Festival 2023), Demake/Demaster (Situ8 City STRUT/TURA 2022, Aphids Gutful 2023), Piece (for pieces) (PIECES. LGI/The Substation. 2019), Light, colour and quiet conversation (TO MAKE TO DO/Neon Park, 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) and Set (Lucy Guerin Inc. Piece’s for Small Spaces, 2013, EDC Solo Festival of Dance 2014). Video work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Sydney, Federation Square, Gertrude Street Projection Festival, APHIDS’ Contentious Buffet, Arts House, Dromana Drive In, Melbourne Fringe Online, HIAP Helsinki and The Substation for FRAME- A Biennial of Dance. She is currently developing new work Body Corp, an assembled choreography for video, image and object, the work considers the body as a conglomerate losing its edges to overlap, coexist, slip between forms, an uncanny ecology of parts assembled & reassembled - human & non-human - finding patterns of unintentional coordination & multi-species, multiform, multi-temporal collaboration.
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- recycling content to consider materiality and how we come together. Their works include Crystal Touch (Melbourne Fringe/Coburg RSL 2022), What Am I Supposed To Do? (WAISTD)(Arts Centre Melbourne/Melbourne Fringe Take Over! 2019), Underworld (Melbourne Knowledge Week 2019, Supercell 2017, Darebin Arts/Speakeasy 2017), Equinox (Castlemaine State Festival 2019), OVERWORLD (Next Wave 2014, Dance Massive 2015) and ongoing participatory dance project Deep Soulful Sweats (Ian Potter Museum 2019, Castlemaine Festival 2019, MPavilion 2018 and 2021, Brisbane Festival 2016, PICA 2017, Next Wave 2014, FOLA 2014, Dark MOFO 2014/15) and Upacara/Ritual (Dark MOFO 2015, with UTAS) and are currently developing The Eleventh Hour, an 11 hour participatory experience. Deep Soulful Sweats had its European premiere in 2023 with presentation at Homo Novus, Latvia and ANTI Festival, Finland.
Sarah’s performance credits include work by Joan Jonas, Luke George, Harrison Hall, Andrew Treloar, Amrita Hepi, Shelley Lasica, Natalie Abbott, Rebecca Jensen, Jo Lloyd, Shian Law, Carlee Mellow, Brooke Stamp, Aphids, Deanne Butterworth/Linda Tegg, Ben Speth, Lee Serle, Atlanta Eke and Maria Hassabi.
Sarah was artist in resident at HIAP, Helsinki, Dancenorth and Centre for Projection Art and has an expanded choreographic practice, developing new works for stage, screen and gallery. She is a grateful recipient of the Chloe Munro Independent Artist Fellowship and Creative Victoria’s Creators Fund.