"When great technique meets outrageous style (and cheeky fun) you get SARA."
- Dance Magazine
Friday at noon May 31th, Internet diva and brain child of Nicole Bridgens and Jordan Isadore, SARA DU JOUR will perform, along with Christopher Williams and Douglas Dunn at the historic 92nd St. Y on Manhattan's Upper East Side. SARA is one persona who takes form through multiple dancers. On Friday she will be played by Jordan Isadore, Nikima Jagudajev, Russell Lilie, Eloise DeLuca, and Brendan Duggan.
SARA is obsessed with the now - what's trendy, what's happening - she wants you to LOVE her on Facebook, follow her on Instagram and watch her YouTube videos (again and again). She likes seeing herself - in the mirror and on the Internet. SARA is a reflection of both dancer culture and American culture at large. SARA also has a secret passion for history - dance history specifically - and she weaves past and present together into each piece through movement, imagery, and creative process. SARA may seem superficial, but under the topknot and glitter hands, she is a very complex girl.
photo of Jordan Isadore and Nicole Bridgens, courtesy of SARA DU JOUR
SARA's creators - Isadore and Bridgens - met in college at USC Long Beach. After graduating they traveled to Israele together for an intensive summer study program with the Batsheva Dance Company. It was during that time that they confronted a challenge most dancers face - finding a point of entry into what can seem a very exclusive clique - the "dance world." Unlike a lot of dance, SARA is intentionally, as Bridgens puts it, "packaged for easy consumption." However, everything SARA performs is a skillfully structured remix. Isadore describes his role in this project as being that of a dance DJ - piecing together bits of borrowed movement, spacial patterns, and themes from everyone from Loie Fuller to Doug Varone and from classics like the Nutcracker to Calvin Klein fragrance commercials. There is a lonely, darkly humorous theme that runs through both the live and online performances SARA shares with her public. She allows us - particularly those of us who dance - an opportunity to marvel, laugh, and perhaps wince at the self-corrections, judgements, dreams, and distractions this character portrays.
SARA du Jour, featuring Jordan Isadore
On Friday, audience members will see three short pieces. LES SARA is a duet between SARAs - Isadore and Jagudajev - based on gestures taken from photos of female performing groups including the Ronettes and the Supremes. The spacial pattern was created using a phrase of text translated into brail and laid out as a grid that dancers then copy as they move in space. In fact all of the dance pieces that Isadore and Bridgens make together - collaborating across the country using tools like Evernote, Skype and email - is a mashup of Cunningham-esque numbers games. Often one choreographer will work out the gesture phrases and the other the spacial patterns. "The counting can get crazy," admits Isadore.
The second piece SARA will perform is the Spanish Harlem Shake, a remix of Trisha Brown's Spanish Dance with the YouTube sensation Harlem Shake. And lastly Love Me, a repetative solo, performed by Isadore based on the physicalization of other [SARAs] "liking" what he's doing as if the stage was a Facebook post. Love Me brings to life and into real-time the impact, distraction, and manipulative influence an online audience can produce.
For more information on SARA: http://www.saradujour.com
For more information on her appearance at the 92nd St Y visit: http://www.92y.org/Uptown/Event/Fridays-at-Noon-5/31/13.aspx