Kickstarter

Alchemy Dance Theater has been invited to a dance festival in Paris, France.  The company will perform and Sarah will teach two workshops. Now in its fourth year, Bellyfusions is known for bringing together talented artists from across Europe and around the globe for an exciting and enriching three days of workshops and performances. 

This is an exciting opportunity for Alchemy Dance Theater to present our newest piece, "Sadhana", to an audience that wouldn't otherwise have a chance to see it live.  We've performed the piece a few times in New York and it's been very well received -- audiences have told us it's our best work yet, and have used words such as "moving", "stunning", "extraordinary", "innovative", "transporting", "spiritual" and more to describe it.  We are very happy to have the chance to present this piece to a wider audience. 

But we need your help to get to the festival -- we're asking for your support so that we can pay for our airfare and accommodations while we're in Paris.  While Bellyfusions is a highly regarded professional festival, it is run by a team of dedicated and experienced volunteers and the budget is very limited.

Because we will be able to reach an entirely new audience of artists and presenters from all over Europe, we hope that our appearance at Bellyfusions will lead to future opportunities to perform and present our work.  So any money you can donate to this trip is an investment in the future of the company and the development of future work, as well as an investment in the life of this particular piece.

Founder and Artistic Director Sarah Johansson Locke named the company Alchemy Dance Theater because she's always been drawn to the concept of Alchemy -- the dedicated pursuit of creative transformation and experimentation...the bringing together of many elements to form a dynamic and integrated whole that activates and improves each element by its combination with the other.  The company embodies these ideas in its dedication to artistic collaboration and group process, as well as its commitment to drawing from diverse inspirations and movement traditions to create original and innovative work.

Your support is part of that Alchemy -- with any amount you can give, you will contribute to the whole, and be an indispensible ingredient of our recipe leading to a transformative experience -- the chance for Alchemy Dance Theater to share an important and celebrated work with a wider audience who wouldn't otherwise have the chance to see the piece live.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

We're honored to share with you what a few distinguished audience members have said about our work, and about "Sadhana" in particular:

I loved watching “Sadhana”.  The piece was moving for me in many ways, and I really enjoyed the dancers’ inner stillness, becoming one with the music and going deep into the realm of the divine feminine.  Even though they did not perform this in water, I felt like they were dancing in a pool of blue water going deep into the depths of their souls.

– Dalia Carella, Artistic Director of The Dalia Carella Dance Collective

I like the fact that Alchemy uses many influences - yoga, modern, bellydance - but the result is something that has its own voice, not bound to any single style or vocabulary.  This piece has a very human quality, and it causes the viewer to look at the relationships of space, bodies, and light in a fresh way. The images of the "three graces" who dance here imprint on the mind, emotionally moving even as the minimalist development of the relationships is so subtle over the course of the piece.

– Ranya Renee Fleisher: dancer, choreographer, teacher, artistic director, producer

Sarah Johansson Locke's stunning dance piece "Sadhana", as with many of her pieces, is a masterful blend of world dance and meditative movements.  Serene and tender, the music and dance draw us to another dimension where time and peacefulness reign.  The shapes and design of the dance create beautiful, loving moments that keep us yearning for more and send us home feeling better about the world.  I do hope Europe will have a chance to see this amazing group perform.

– Ayshe Wings: dancer, choreographer, teacher

My wife and I were extremely moved by your performance. When you see as many amazing performances as I do, it gets harder to really feel them to the core, but for your performance we absolutely did. Bravo!

– Brian Feister: photographer and web designer