Sarah Swenson - Career Narrative
The highest honor I’ve ever received is that of being entrusted with the transmission of my elders’ classic works. The value of this honor has no measure. In addition, I have been offered some commissions, which I was honored to accept. Upon my M.F.A. graduation, I received the Graduate Dean’s List Award of University Artists & Scholars, awarded to the top 1% of graduate students at California State University, Long Beach.
With a background in, and deep commitment to, historical modern dance dating back to my teens, I learned in my forties of the ground-breaking era of early post-modern dance when, while in graduate school in Los Angeles, I met Simone Forti, and shortly after, Rudy Perez. With them I discovered a latent skill for the sensibility of that period and the execution of their work. That was 26 years ago, and I couldn’t have anticipated the change in the trajectory of my own life and career that ensued.
Because of my relationship with these two important American innovators, I describe myself today as a hybrid choreographer, performer, and teacher who identifies equally with two major trends in American modern dance. This hybridism is an asset, and I bring it to bear every time I engage with my students and other artists, professionally and academically.
Thus I would say my contribution to the academy, only once as a full-time professor but largely as a lecturer or guest artist, has been a mixture of values from these very different eras, and each are brought to bear based on the needs of the population with which I am working. I would say that my attitude during these transmissions is one of calmness, patience, respect, and flexibility when introducing concepts and scores as tools for personal creative discovery; and in other situations when interest in my neo-classical work is expressed, there is more emphasis on a certain discipline of exactness.
The process of transmitting Simone’s work (which includes Dance Constructions and other non-Dance Construction pieces), has become more and more rewarding and impactful over time as I refine my methodology in conveying her practices, values, and specific movement scores- leading often to a bonding with students and performers that I deeply treasure. Some of them have said the process is “transformational.”
In the late nineties I was first Simone’s student, then becoming friends, later, collaborators, surrogate Dance Constructions teacher fro 2012, then Master Teacher
of her Dance Constructions upon their acquisition by MoMA in 2015. Over a decade we collaborated on several evening-length works as “The Sleeves” with two other Los Angeles-based artists, Terrence Luke Johnson (improvisation artist and writer), and Douglas Wadle (trombonist and philosopher). These collaborations birthed new attitudes and forms of creation for me, and eventually resulted in my own practice I call “Cup of Words” [COW], developed during our project To Borrow Salt (2009). It’s an improvisation process leading to choreographed solos that I used with Simone and the other collaborators as part of the piece- a practice I continue today with individual artists and groups.
Most recently, I used the COW process in group form at a performance laboratory for visual arts students from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze [Fine Arts Academy of Florence] with great success, showcasing their individual artistry and understanding that one did not have to be a trained dancer to create and perform movement. Another COW project, Singapore Remote (2020/2025), that had been developing, and which ultimately collapsed under Covid, has now been revived due to a space and production grant for rehearsal and performance from the University of Singapore’s Lasalle College of the Arts, and will be completed in Singapore with the original artists in late 2025.
Being a member of Rudy’s ensemble since 2004 in many ways defies description. His ultra minimalist approach provoked a stillness to me I didn’t know I had, and is really the polar opposite to what I had come to call my neo-modernism. Rudy’s strident individualism as an artist who emerged in the Judson era paralleled his unique personality. He was difficult and demanding but satisfied my own desire for a certain physical and mental rigor. With Rudy Perez’ style there is a great deal of student and artist contribution in the class and creation process. The values include a stillness seldom seen today, as well as physical strength and a profound simplicity, very reductive. We were extremely close and yet I feel I was still getting to know his mind when he died one year ago September 29, 2023. The personal sorrow and artistic loss is still potent. Today I am one of three Trustees of his Choreographic Trust, but handle most of the work of promoting, preserving, and protecting his legacy. I help to manage the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble, of which I am still a member. The re-staging of his work is something we are offering dance departments across the country.
Although Simone and Rudy are very different individuals and their work product totally different, many of their values are the same: ultra-simplicity, task-based, pedestrian movement, observation of life, stillness. I’ve absorbed all that and offer it freely to the artists and students with whom I am working.
I explain this to paint a picture of the enormity of the responsibility I’ve assumed (and indeed welcomed) on behalf of my elders. It was never a question. In a measurable way, my time and energy has been split and has made pursuit of my own work more challenging. While I continue to create with my company, Vox Dance Theatre (VDT), of which I am founder (2004), it is much less often, and functions more as a pick-up company for projects as they emerge. VDT has been largely but not exclusively a vehicle for my own choreography, which is a kind of evolved form of the classical modern genre, which I call neo-modernism - that is, a vocabulary sourced from historical modernism, but modified and used in a different way. With VDT I strove for an ethnically diverse company that to this day is still comprised only of women- the only difference now being it is also really age diverse, with the oldest member, Cheryl Banks-Smith (74), myself (67), Tamsin Carlson (55), Queala Clancy (38), and others, ranging down to 24. A great deal of this neo-modernist work has been re-staged at college and universities over the past twenty-five years, mainly in California.
I’ve been offered several commissions which I regard as honors. The first was Ancestors (2000), subtitled Graham, Humphrey, Horton, Taylor, Limon, Ailey & Balanchine. It was my first offer out of graduate school, created for the Orange County High School of the Arts (Santa Ana, CA) Dance Department. With music by Philip Glass, Symphony No. 3, Mvt. III, an homage to the early moderns, was just performed again with a live orchestra in Los Angeles in June 2024, and remains my most requested work by college and university dance departments, rivaled only by my signature work, Fimmine (2005.
Later, Mary Verdi Fletcher, Founder and Artistic Director of Dancing Wheels, the first physically integrated dance company in the United States, offered me a commission on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990), coinciding with the 35th anniversary of her company. Clamor (2015), was based on a famous act of civil disobedience known as “the capitol crawl”, which helped propel the ADA to passage. Original music by Alessandro Girasoli, Crawl, The Politico, Celebration.
Two years later I was invited by Vox Femina Women’s Choir of Los Angeles to create a new piece for their 20th Anniversary concert, Women on the Rise. For them I created Fire Within (2017), a trio for three VDT dancers, performed live with the choir.
In 2022 I was approached by the (Harry) Partch Ensemble to choreograph the entire tryptic Plectra & Percussion Dances (2022), written by Partch in the 1950’s for his original instruments, and which had never been choreographed and performed together as he had planned. Plectra & Percussion Dances consisted of three completely different and distinct compositions, (Castor & Pollux, Ring around the Moon, Even Wild Horses) which I choreographed on VDT, and in which I also performed in at REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles with live music by the Partch Ensemble.
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With a background in, and deep commitment to, historical modern dance dating back to my teens, I learned in my forties of the ground-breaking era of early post-modern dance when, while in graduate school in Los Angeles, I met Simone Forti, and shortly after, Rudy Perez. With them I discovered a latent skill for the sensibility of that period and the execution of their work. That was 26 years ago, and I couldn’t have anticipated the change in the trajectory of my own life and career that ensued.
Because of my relationship with these two important American innovators, I describe myself today as a hybrid choreographer, performer, and teacher who identifies equally with two major trends in American modern dance. This hybridism is an asset, and I bring it to bear every time I engage with my students and other artists, professionally and academically.
Thus I would say my contribution to the academy, only once as a full-time professor but largely as a lecturer or guest artist, has been a mixture of values from these very different eras, and each are brought to bear based on the needs of the population with which I am working. I would say that my attitude during these transmissions is one of calmness, patience, respect, and flexibility when introducing concepts and scores as tools for personal creative discovery; and in other situations when interest in my neo-classical work is expressed, there is more emphasis on a certain discipline of exactness.
The process of transmitting Simone’s work (which includes Dance Constructions and other non-Dance Construction pieces), has become more and more rewarding and impactful over time as I refine my methodology in conveying her practices, values, and specific movement scores- leading often to a bonding with students and performers that I deeply treasure. Some of them have said the process is “transformational.”
In the late nineties I was first Simone’s student, then becoming friends, later, collaborators, surrogate Dance Constructions teacher fro 2012, then Master Teacher
of her Dance Constructions upon their acquisition by MoMA in 2015. Over a decade we collaborated on several evening-length works as “The Sleeves” with two other Los Angeles-based artists, Terrence Luke Johnson (improvisation artist and writer), and Douglas Wadle (trombonist and philosopher). These collaborations birthed new attitudes and forms of creation for me, and eventually resulted in my own practice I call “Cup of Words” [COW], developed during our project To Borrow Salt (2009). It’s an improvisation process leading to choreographed solos that I used with Simone and the other collaborators as part of the piece- a practice I continue today with individual artists and groups.
Most recently, I used the COW process in group form at a performance laboratory for visual arts students from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze [Fine Arts Academy of Florence] with great success, showcasing their individual artistry and understanding that one did not have to be a trained dancer to create and perform movement. Another COW project, Singapore Remote (2020/2025), that had been developing, and which ultimately collapsed under Covid, has now been revived due to a space and production grant for rehearsal and performance from the University of Singapore’s Lasalle College of the Arts, and will be completed in Singapore with the original artists in late 2025.
Being a member of Rudy’s ensemble since 2004 in many ways defies description. His ultra minimalist approach provoked a stillness to me I didn’t know I had, and is really the polar opposite to what I had come to call my neo-modernism. Rudy’s strident individualism as an artist who emerged in the Judson era paralleled his unique personality. He was difficult and demanding but satisfied my own desire for a certain physical and mental rigor. With Rudy Perez’ style there is a great deal of student and artist contribution in the class and creation process. The values include a stillness seldom seen today, as well as physical strength and a profound simplicity, very reductive. We were extremely close and yet I feel I was still getting to know his mind when he died one year ago September 29, 2023. The personal sorrow and artistic loss is still potent. Today I am one of three Trustees of his Choreographic Trust, but handle most of the work of promoting, preserving, and protecting his legacy. I help to manage the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble, of which I am still a member. The re-staging of his work is something we are offering dance departments across the country.
Although Simone and Rudy are very different individuals and their work product totally different, many of their values are the same: ultra-simplicity, task-based, pedestrian movement, observation of life, stillness. I’ve absorbed all that and offer it freely to the artists and students with whom I am working.
I explain this to paint a picture of the enormity of the responsibility I’ve assumed (and indeed welcomed) on behalf of my elders. It was never a question. In a measurable way, my time and energy has been split and has made pursuit of my own work more challenging. While I continue to create with my company, Vox Dance Theatre (VDT), of which I am founder (2004), it is much less often, and functions more as a pick-up company for projects as they emerge. VDT has been largely but not exclusively a vehicle for my own choreography, which is a kind of evolved form of the classical modern genre, which I call neo-modernism - that is, a vocabulary sourced from historical modernism, but modified and used in a different way. With VDT I strove for an ethnically diverse company that to this day is still comprised only of women- the only difference now being it is also really age diverse, with the oldest member, Cheryl Banks-Smith (74), myself (67), Tamsin Carlson (55), Queala Clancy (38), and others, ranging down to 24. A great deal of this neo-modernist work has been re-staged at college and universities over the past twenty-five years, mainly in California.
I’ve been offered several commissions which I regard as honors. The first was Ancestors (2000), subtitled Graham, Humphrey, Horton, Taylor, Limon, Ailey & Balanchine. It was my first offer out of graduate school, created for the Orange County High School of the Arts (Santa Ana, CA) Dance Department. With music by Philip Glass, Symphony No. 3, Mvt. III, an homage to the early moderns, was just performed again with a live orchestra in Los Angeles in June 2024, and remains my most requested work by college and university dance departments, rivaled only by my signature work, Fimmine (2005.
Later, Mary Verdi Fletcher, Founder and Artistic Director of Dancing Wheels, the first physically integrated dance company in the United States, offered me a commission on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990), coinciding with the 35th anniversary of her company. Clamor (2015), was based on a famous act of civil disobedience known as “the capitol crawl”, which helped propel the ADA to passage. Original music by Alessandro Girasoli, Crawl, The Politico, Celebration.
Two years later I was invited by Vox Femina Women’s Choir of Los Angeles to create a new piece for their 20th Anniversary concert, Women on the Rise. For them I created Fire Within (2017), a trio for three VDT dancers, performed live with the choir.
In 2022 I was approached by the (Harry) Partch Ensemble to choreograph the entire tryptic Plectra & Percussion Dances (2022), written by Partch in the 1950’s for his original instruments, and which had never been choreographed and performed together as he had planned. Plectra & Percussion Dances consisted of three completely different and distinct compositions, (Castor & Pollux, Ring around the Moon, Even Wild Horses) which I choreographed on VDT, and in which I also performed in at REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles with live music by the Partch Ensemble.
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