Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in N.Y.C. before moving to Canada, where she fell in love with contact improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco and started the performance group Contraband, combining the principles of contact, systems of the body, and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, six Isadora Duncan Awards, Djerassi Artist-in-Residence Awards, a 2016 residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, ten Women who made a Difference honors, the Bay Guardian Award, and a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award. Sara has practiced dowsing as a healing modality since 2010, is a Master NLP practitioner, and has a Master Certification in Intuition Medicine Ò. Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project, influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions over many years. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness.
Photo: Mark McBeth.
