"While denying the form of the epic, I try to make epics: sprawling and grand work that is as ruthlessly formal as it is personal. I create environments and structures that force a relationship with Òreality,Ó with what is actually going on, and, so, highlight the history of the watcher with the room. I want to cultivate observation of excellence, virtuosity, struggle, fatigue, and boredom as elements in a work. The passionate arguments I constantly have with myself about the relevance of contemporary dance are the major contributor to the dances themselves. Driven by the desire for the problematic, the silent corners, the unseen, the quiet large thing, and for great beauty and ugliness on the stage, I am always working, always, and never arriving." As much an installation artist as a choreographer, Sarah Michelson makes rigorous, passionate, site specific dances that turn audiences upside down. Rethinking theatrical spaceÑan audience faces the back of a familiar theatre; a work is made for two sites; performers leave through an emergency exit only to be seen later through a window onto the street outsideÑher events have been called architectural dance experiences. The movement? Insistent. Quick. Obsessive. Seemingly repetitive, if you donÕt look closely. A force field of calculated randomness performed by highly trained and untrained dancers who populate the exaggerated distances and up-close intimacy, those choreographic decisions may appear spontaneous yet theyÕre fully calculated to brook no improvisation. Michelson draws on movies and fashion and emotionally resonant small real life gestures. Blasting her viewers with unexpected lighting changes (and what one writer termed her Òimpudent intelligenceÓ), Michelson relentlessly thinks and tests out and thinks again about just what constitutes Òa dance.Ó

Born 1964, Manchester, United Kingdom Lives in New York City 1990 M.F.A., Fiction Writing, Mills College, Oakland, California 1985 Laban Centre, IPC, London 1984 B.A., Literature, London University, Goldsmiths College, 1st class

	2006	Swan Lake, Transitions Dance Company (Commissioner), Laban Centre, London
	2005	Daylight (for Minneapolis), Walker Art Center, (Commissioner) Minneapolis, Minnesota
	2005	Daylight, premiered at Performance Space 122 (Co-commissioner), New York; On the Boards, Seattle, Washington
	2005	Love is Everything, Lyon Opera Ballet (Commissioner), Lyon, France
	2003-04	Shadowmann, premiered at The Kitchen (Part 1) and P.S. 122 (Part 2), New York; Tanz im August, Berlin; Zurich Theatre Spektakel Festival; The Venice Biennale; SommerSzene, Salzburg; The Cutting Edge Festival, Frankfurt, Germany
	2003	The Apartment, 857 5th Avenue, New York
	2002	Grivdon at the Grivdon Lawn, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, Massachusetts
	2002	The Experts, White Oak Dance Project, New York
	2002	Grivdon at the Grivdon Concrete, The Kitchen, New York
	2001	Group Experience, P.S. 122, New York
	2001	I'm in Fawn, The Kitchen, New York
	2000	Aut Norm, P.S. 122, New York
	2000	Blister Me, Dixon Place, New York
	1999	Miami 3XLA, The Kitchen, New York

	2006	Swan Lake (working title), The Brooklyn Academy of Music (Co-producer), New York, October 2006

	2006	Creative Capital Foundation Award
	2006	American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program
	2005,06	The Jerome Foundation
	2004	Rockefeller MAP Fund Grant
	2004	New York Foundation for the Arts
	2004	New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project
	2004	National Performance Network Creation Fund
	2002,04	The Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, Arts International
	2002, 03,04	Altria Group, Inc.
	2002,03	NY Dance and Performance Award (Bessie)
	2002	Der Foerder Prize Zurich