Symara Sarai

Symara Sarai, a Portland, Oregon native currently residing in Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally with deep recognition. Named Dance Magazines’ 2025 “Top 25 to Watch,” a 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, and a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago, she is known to be a courageously committed performer and maker. The Dai Ailian Foundation scholarship led her to Beijing, China where she spent two years gaining an associate degree in modern choreography at the Beijing Dance Academy. Sarai is a 2019 graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance Program. She was a resident artist for Bearnstow, Gibney 6.2 Work Up, Gallim’s 2022 Moving Artist’s Residency, BAX’s Fall 2022 Space Grant Program, Center for Performance Research’s 2022 AIR Program, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist 23/24 as well as a 23/24 Women in Motion Commissioned artist. They are currently a 24-26 Movement Research Artist in Residence and a 24-26 Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Resident. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in the NY Times, Dance Enthusiast, Fjord, as well as promoted through Forbes. She has had multiple film works commissioned by Berlin-based choreographer Christoph Winkler. They have presented work at New York Live Arts, The Clarice at UMD, The LGBT Center in NY, Judson Church, BAAD, Kestrels, and other venues throughout the United States, China, and Germany. She is currently an Urban Bush Women company member. She has also notably worked with Jasmine Hearn, Ogemdi Ude, Pioneers Go East Collective, Kevin Wynn, Joanna Kotze, Nattie Trogdon+Hollis Bartlett, and Slowdanger, among others.

My choreographic practice navigates the complexities of my personal and cultural histories through movement, sound, and research. At present, I am interested in creating worlds inside of proscenium spaces that create space for queer Black femme anarchical play. I am presently in conversation with how the black femme body can access authentic liberation and autonomy. Thus far to achieve this I have cultivated safe improvisational dance spaces that allow for the fullness of the black emotional body to live by generating scores that give space to engage with rage, sorrow, joy and more. I create the space to access suppressed emotionality in community as a way to be in proximity to liberation. My practice works to arrive at ultimate play which is an indulgent practice of surrendering that I am steadily in as a Black, queer, radical, wildass maker in the field. Through my work I aim to embody the destruction of normalcy and known structures. I am eager to exchange thoughts on fearlessness and radical vulnerability centered on empowering uninhibited desires and wants.