On Performance Art and the Body: An Interview with Sarah Brahim
Portrait taken by Vi Son Trinh
Sarah Brahim is a movement artist passionate about creating meaningful work with artists of varying mediums. She grew up studying, choreographing, performing, and teaching jazz, ballet, and tap in Portland, Oregon. Studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance (SFCD) and in 2016 she graduated from London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS) and holds a BA Honors degree in Contemporary Dance. At LCDS she further explored the depth and resonance of movement, discovering her passion for improvisation, collaboration, choreographing, and healing through movement. Since graduating she has worked professionally performing, choreographing, and directing movement.
Her work is rooted in experiences of the body ranging through full physical embodiment, transcendence, and the unseen body. She creates unique physical languages with articulated gestures in order to express and examine themes such as pain in the body, grief, and loss. Through performance, video, photography, installation, and sound her work explores and embraces the vast conditions of the human experience.
Tell us more about your upbringing and background. How did they shape your interest in performance art?
I was lucky enough to be raised by an incredible mother who was creative and generous and listened to me deeply. As a child, she saw I was struggling to find an outlet of expression and decided to help me find that by taking me to dance and music classes when I was three. My demeanor changed drastically, and I was at my best in these creative environments which demanded focus and discipline. From there, I had many mentors who gave me the best training they could offer and taught me the history of different techniques and would either bring them to my city or arrange trips for us to go study with these masters. So as a child, I trained in many disciplines of dance, theater, and music in a competitive environment.
Around 14, I began choreographing, teaching private and group classes, and was in two local companies (one contemporary and the other tap) in Portland. Those companies worked on a collaborative show, which we toured in the UK at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. That trip really opened my eyes as a youth to the potential of a life in the arts and performance. There was so much extraordinary work happening there 24 hours a day to see, all of which were trying to push a limitation, and it was truly the place for risk and experimentation. Our last stop on that trip was in London, and I knew I’d want to come back and work in performance and the arts there someday.
Formally, my training was studio life, which is typical for dancers who grow up in the United States. Everyday after school, you do 4-5 classes in ballet, pointe, jazz or contemporary, tap, hip hop, and choreography, going home around 10 pm each night. Weekends are for rehearsals for performance and more training or competitions. Then from 14, I was accepted to train at SFCD, which was a program of intensive training across ballet and contemporary disciplines that allowed dancers between 14-25 would move to train there for the summer. The teachers I met at this program impacted my education so deeply because they were thinking in so many creative ways of how we can best use the body as a tool of expression and communication. And it felt like nothing was off limits there. We pushed ourselves daily — sweating, crying, and building a lot of trust in order to take bigger risks physically.
My last summer at the conservatory I had come from my final year of university in Oregon Health and Science University, a school for medicine and public health. I was feeling ready to close that chapter of studying the body academically and apply that to the world of performance. The director at the time recommended I audition for the LCDS BFA program. When I met them and tried their work, I was sold and moved to London at 20 to train further and understand my body and practice outside of the context I grew up in.
Self-Portrait (Painted Hills)
What piece(s), show(s), or work(s) inspired you to pursue performance art, particularly dance, both academically and creatively?
There are so many incredible artists that contributed to my understanding and passion for these forms. I would say seeing Chunky Move, NDT, and Crystal Pite was all life changing to see as a youth choreographically. The experimentation we did at SFCD and teachers like Alex Ketly, Summer Lee Rhatigan, and Christian Burns ignited my passion for endless investigation of the body. The tap masters Diane Walker, Jimmy Slyde, and Jeni Le Gon, who I was able to study with, presented the gift of the beautiful and difficult life long dedication to an art. All of these people moved me with their belief in movement as a legitimate way to research the body, music, and the world we inhabit.
Something significant I learned from all of these teachers was listening. Listening to your body, to the space you're in, your internal rhythms of breath and pulse, the others around you. And from these points investigate and open yourself to surprise, curiosity, and humility. This process lends to exploration of textures and endless feelings, which can be amplified at different scales: a process which allows you to fully embody yourself, then transcend beyond your physical limitations by learning how to hold your energy from the smallest place in your body to the entire scale of a room. This is an education in soft power, a quality I hold at high esteem.
Photograph of Sarah by Mia Krys
The main medium you utilize across your different projects is your body. How does that allow you to explore different themes?
For me, the body is an infinite source of inspiration. It allows for my work to have a range of resonance with people because the body and movement are a type of universal language. Yet the form also allows for abstraction, fragmentation, and intense specificity.
The themes I explore in my work come from things which have impacted my life greatly. For example, the last few years many works I made were based around grief and pain in the body. It was important for me to understand this for myself of course, but ultimately when I was grieving, I found comfort in art works, music, movement, and writing which explored this experience. And I felt like I needed to contribute to a way of seeing and understanding it as an offering in some way. Studying for so long the choreographic body or form I have tried to unlearn a lot of the technical work I studied and find a neutral language of how my own body expresses. From there, I’m diving deep into the qualities of the unseen body and my work in recent years it’s more revolving around how to express the unseen body externally or capture it visually.
Who We Are Out of the Dark
The performance arts are not foreign to Saudi. Yet the interest in the visibility of women creating and leading performance art locally is relatively recent. How is your work received locally and internationally? What pieces do you think could only be received well in Saudi and not necessarily anywhere else?
My work was very well received in the region just from sharing experimentation and my film works online. I think there is a thirst in the region for contemporary storytelling through all mediums: performance, theater, music, writing, and visual arts. That thirst is really driving what feels like a momentous moment in the history of art which is taking place in the Arab world.
The first time I presented work in Saudi was in December 2019 at Sidra Arts Foundation film screening. I talked about a film I had made titled The Space Between, which was a film solo performance around the transnational experience. I was trying to make something that felt live and tested the patience of an audience by using a one take solo at the end. I had no idea how it would be received, but the response was beautiful. People asked incredible questions, and the dialogue after was inspiring and surpassed the engagement I had in the past with audience and post-show talk situations. I remember this older man came up to me after the event and told me he felt like his body had disappeared — he forgot he was in one and felt like he was moving through my movements during the film. That is one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever said to me, and I will never forget that moment.
You’ve joined different fellowships and art residency programs in Saudi and around the world. Does the institution and geographic location of each program define (and limit) the themes you want to explore?
Art fellowships and residencies can all differ in the intentional and goal of the program, but, overall, it is a system of sustained support like a breath of new air in the practice of a working artist. I have found the geographic location to be one of the most impactful factors of a residency. Whether it is in the mountains, a village, or center of a big city, this really sets a stage for me of pace, landscape, and context to explore. I come with my own projects, research, and aspirations for the time I’ll spend there. But it’s also important for me to take advantage of what being surrounded by these people has to offer. Residencies for me have always been the place where seeds of future projects are planted.
Conversation and quality time with people there are so key because the place has made an effort to hold space for genuine international and artist exchange that in itself is so special. The programs tend to foster friendships and unique connections which is important to continue as an artist moving forward to share your work and be present with people who come from different cultures and practices.
