Meet Sara Pizzi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Pizzi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My work ethic comes from my being and what I want to input in the dance community. I aim to offer the platform which I have been looking for, a safe place for growth and launch desired from our diverse communities. This, by performing for dance companies which founded their values in the community support, most of all in the empowerment of underrepresented artists or using thematically topical aspects to spread awareness. And, being a teaching artist for diverse demographies: beginner adults, professional dancers offering community affordable classes, multigenerational free family programs, kinds and seniors with disabilities and after school programs for under-represented communities.

In addition, as representative of underrepresented communities such as LGBTQIA+, immigrants – with my collaborative work with my partner Aika Takeshima in sarAika Movement Collective, we am working daily to ensuring our professionals and all of our communities are respected, feel safe, and belong are essential. By providing paid opportunities, offering creation and performance opportunities, community and emerging artists events, open/affordable classes & founding our values and workflow on the statements of diversity, equity and inclusion as fundamentals of every project.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a contemporary conceptual dance artist, which includes also being a choreographer, dancer and dance teacher. My career started in my teen years with urban/commercial dance, being part of the dance agency “Spotlight work team” that allowed me to perform for national events, competitions, tv shows and advertisements commercials. Therefore, my career had a drastic change of direction once I moved to New York. My education has become primarily based on ballet & modern techniques, landing on the complete focus on the study and application of contemporary dance, being able to create an organic and unique style that mixed my urban background with a more academic and technical aspect.

Now, my art is based on any physical medium which can evoke any inner personal exploration, deeper analysis of our inner self, the creation of a safe place for discovering and questioning & can bring togetherness in spreading awareness around topical aspects and common places. This creates performances which break the concept of standard performance creating collaborative, conceptual, interactive art experiences & teaching any level and any age, prioritizing any class that involves people with physical and mental disabilities or for underrepresented communities. These are the goals of my own movement collective that I founded in 2021 with Aika Takeshima, naming it sarAika movement collective. I really trust in this project and it makes me proud that last year we were able to grow so much, performing every month for different DEI organizations/events, being able to assist and represent underrepresented communities and voices. Thanks to the success of this year, the schedule for 2o24 is full and this makes me proud of myself and the NYC dance community.

In the meantime, as a performer I’m currently working for several dance companies based in NYC and for some projects of various aspects that can include pure dance or collaboration with visual and performing artists. I’m a company member of: Valerie Green/Dance Entropy (which I’m also teaching artists for afterschool programs), Six Degrees Dance and Reza Dance Project. I’m dance captain of The Next Stage Project & Light Painting NYC. In addition to this, recently I was a project based member for Julia Asher collective & I was guest choreographer & dancer to more than 60 events/organizations based in the 5 boroughs of NYC. I’m dance teacher for the program Woodside on the Move teaching dance to the combined class that sees youth and seniors together – I’m dance facilitator for MUSICAMENTE institute, offering classes for individuals with autism, and sub teacher for DanceWave and Dalton Schools. Lastly, I’m a videographer/photographer assistant for BECCAVISION.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1) being generous> this city is a hustle for everyone, that for how hard and lonely can sound, it is actual a useful net full of resources and potential to be able to support each other. When you hear “NYC is the city of connection” is not purely directed to the economical network behind, but it is a statement to push each other to help each other, to grow together. More help you are going to give, more you are going to receive and if you ask, usually someone will have an answer to help you.

2) be open> as it is important to stay focuses to not loose your final goal, in this city and career path the flexibility and openness to any opportunity is fundamental. Being open to accept gigs that maybe are not your speciality, maybe are not what you really want to do and maybe are not paid enough.. but what can you gain from that experience? Maybe this will guide you to the opportunity that you want, to meet new people, to gain new skills and to maybe understand that a dream can shift..

3) keep study> I can sound cheesy and do not hate me for sounding like your school teacher, but I deeply believe that “education makes you free”. Free to choose, free to change, free to understand more around you, to expand your possibilities, to know the world around you and change at your favor. Dance will never be only movement! There is a whole world around it, and knowing it, improving it and expand it, this is our mission as artists.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Two of the most valuable developmental moments which deeply impact my career and lifestyle are:

1) sense of interruption given to pandemic, which deeply force me to re-define myself, re-set my goals and work hard to create my artistry/work and career from scratch. Hitting the point of giving up or work hard, and committing to problem solving gathering all my resources and willingness to become who I am and why I move country.

2) sense of acceptance I can be wrong, I can be not enough, I can change idea. Shifting from “negative aspect” to huge possibility of improvement and expansion. I’m empowered to change, to challenge, to shift, to morph and to become a new person every day. This was by working in really hard environment and dealing with the harsh realities of the artistic ecosystem, as meeting diverse inspiring people, being emerged in different context and situations.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Chanette Manso Conrad Turner

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