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Our dedication to art is a practice of spiritual, fundamental, and collective proportions. Art as liberation. The body as a site of vulnerable transgression. Curiosity guides our trajectory, and our work is a disruptive tool to keep digging and opening our sense of belonging together. We disarm and empower our audiences through sound and movement primarily. The scale ranges from 1-1 intimate settings to group public interactions, and the full spectrum in between. Forever a work in progress.​

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We convene national and international teaching artists with Chicago art makers across genres in the independent and fringe arenas (including dance, butoh, poetry, film, curations, productions, experimental music). We collaborate with artists around the globe to create opportunities for workshops, performances, and conversations about the body, for the body through Butoh Curious Chi 

Elaine Lemieux and Sara Zalek

Elaine Lemieux and Sara have a decade long collaboration that has taken many forms and continues to evolve as iterative Moov Voice classes, audio and video recordings, and intimate showings of operatic voice, classical music scores, and Butoh inspired movement.

Tina Lafauve and Sara Zalek playing saw

Tina and Sara play an 8 foot saw, bathed in red light with a projection looming behind them. This collaboration features contact mics and household objects revisioned and remade; various experiments with effect and delay pedals, mobile units, spacious machine sounds, and other ridiculous antics.

Hot Mess! October 22, 2023. photo by Liina Raud

Collaborators in Hot Mess! gather around Aza Greenlee, who created this durational installation of themselves with worms and dirt.

Gold Test @Ignition Project Space Video Still by Laura Mitchell

My mouth in one instance of "Gold Test" which took many forms during 2018-19, including a short film, light, contact microphone on sheet metal and poetic device.

A deteriorating wall, that used to be a steel mill and now stands surrounded by nature. The bright b

A deteriorating wall, which used to be a steel mill, collapses over time again a blue sky and scattered clouds. Select recordings of Norman W. Long and Sara Zalek performing galleries, parks, and other Chicago settings was released by Reserve Matinee in 2018. Steelworkers' Drone is available on digital and cassette on Bandcamp.

duet with sheet metal. Video still of "Gold Test" by Laura Mitchell
Julius, Erin and Sara. Photo by Liina Raud

Freedom From and Freedom To, an improvisational, multidisciplinary event curated by Cristal Sabbagh and supported in part by Elastic Arts. In December 2024, I will open the show at Elastic with a 30 minute set with Paige Brown and Damon Locks.

Hautnah, Tadashi Endo student performance. Photo by Ji Yang

A building and collapsing pile of humans on a wood floor, in various white and off white garments, a dark curtain behind. Various expressions and gestures intertwine, chins next to elbows, feet outstretched and hands emerging. One red high heel shoe floats to the very top.

Charged Spaces, Changing Bodies

An underground pool in a Chicago Uptown highrise, with exquisite tile and low lighting, Elaine in the foreground, Sara and Johanna in the background, with cheering figures from a window to the room beyond them.

Sensitive Circuts

Sara Zalek, Gwenyth Zelany Anderson, and Norman W. Long on a walking tour led by the trio, from White Castle to the community garden and back to Experimental Sound Studio for an installation and sharing in reflections.

Trickster Quartet at Edgar Miller Legacy House, Old Town, Chicago.
Formidable Dreams

Sara Zalek gestures inside the vault of Light Box, Detriot, MI. This vault is an original fixture of the building, a former bank turned church turned artist residency space.

In:Between Worlds

Sara Zalek in white makeup and paper umbrella, gazes mournfully at a flower as two bystanders sit on the edge of the fountain seemingly engaged with the scene before them.

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