Artist Bio
Sarah Chase is based on Hornby Island, in the Salish Sea. She is a performer and choreographer whose distinctive signature has garnered her an international reputation. Her work has been presented across Canada and Europe, at such venues as the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Festival TransAmerique (Montreal), the Holland Dance Festival, Klapstuk Festival (Belgium), Salzburg Szene Festival (Austria), Kaaitheater (Belgium), Tanz Quartier (Vienna), Fondation Cartier (Paris) and Theater der Welt (Germany). She has performed and toured with Benôit Lachambre’s Dance par B. Lieux, German choreographer Raimund Hoghe, and has created work for many Canadian artists including: Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Toronto Dance Theatre, Dreamwalker and Andrea Nann, Theatre Replacement, Montreal Danse and Marc Boivin. Sarah is the recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Award for Excellence from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Prize of the Festival at the Munich Dance Biennale. Solos she created for both Peggy Baker and Andrea Nann won Doras in the category of Outstanding Performer in Dance. She is an associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
From the creative community:
“It is rare to witness the birth of a genre. But with Sarah Chase one really does believe it to be possible. The movements seem to grow by themselves from the center of gravity of her body and the breathing of the story. Chase creates an enraptured and at the same time relaxed atmosphere in which dance, speech and music seem to be organically joined to one another.”
— Silvia Stammen, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung
“It is said of Pina Bausch that she taught the dancers how to speak. A speaking dancer of a special kind is Sarah Chase. The pieces of the Canadian performer and choreographer are cleverly constructed rhythmic masterpieces of ‘oral history’ and dance. Through her trust of the wonderful in daily life her stories remind one of fairy tales and myths and yet have the same vigorous brief expression and clarity that mark good short stories.”
— Katja Schneider, The Goethe Institute
“The tiny tableaux of magical beings that Sarah Chase creates from blossoms, leaves, seeds and twigs offer an unexpected encounter with the mystery, majesty and multiplicity of life on earth. The tenderness and high imagination of her images shine and sing with gesture and emotion, inviting us into joyful communion with everything that lives. An artist of rare and exceptional gifts offers us a new way of entering into the wonder and delight of the natural world.”
— Peggy Baker, Dance Artist
“Sarah Chase's nature work is an expansion of her choreographic and storytelling practises through a tactile and exploratory relationship to the available flora (and fauna) that surrounds us.
Changing as the seasons change, the stories and movements captured inside these botanic microcosms reveal a deep empathy for nature, a wild and fantastical imagination, and a reverence for the beauty of all living things.
These nature works are two dimensional sculptures made from the plants and flowers available to the artist, further reflecting and expanding her dance and storytelling work.”
— Maiko Yamamoto, Artistic Director, Theatre Replacement
“Sarah’s eye for the details in the texture of the foliage gives a life to the animals that would be impossible to duplicate in other materials. What I find astonishing is Sarah’s use of space as she positions the scene on the page. The blackness of the space evokes as much as the tiny details of the petals and leaves.”