Director
Ms. Sharlyn Sawyer has been an active professional dancer and performing artist since childhood. Her early dance training included many Eastern and Western dance forms. Women's dances of Central Asia have been her artistic focus for the past twenty years. Sawyer has lived and traveled extensively in Central Asia and Asia Minor performing, teaching and studying the traditional dances of the various regions. The opportunity to study with many master artists abroad has been augmented by years of work with artists from immigrant communities in the United States.
A director and choreographer for both her own and other dance companies from the age of eighteen, in 1986 she founded Ballet Afsaneh, Dance, Music and Poetry of the Silk Road, a professional nonprofit performing arts company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. During her tenure as director she has choreographed dozens of new works and expanded traditional Central Asian dance forms to contemporary choreographic and theatrical venues.
Ms. Sawyer is considered a pioneer in the field of Central Asian performing arts, she has over thirty years experience as a producer and director, producing numerous presentations large and small, often including the management of over twenty-five artists in a typical project. A prolific artist, Ms. Sawyer has choreographed dozens of new works and expanded traditional Central Asian art forms for contemporary theatrical venues. She is also an accomplished videographer and graphic designer. Video credits include: Producer/Director, “Midnight Approaches…”, A multi-dimensional, DVD of short films based on contemporary Iranian poetry, extensive field research projects in Uzbekistan, videotaping and chronicling dance artists at the Tashkent Choreographic Institute, film work in Tajikistan; documenting ancient dance practices in Badakhshan.
Ms. Sawyer has received achievement awards from Iranian-American and Afghan cultural organizations: The Persian Center, the Iranian American Society of New York Inc, Persian Students Association of Stanford University, Society of Afghan Professionals, Afghan Women’s Alliance International and the Afghan Coalition. In 2003 Ms. Sawyer received an Individual Artists Award in Choreography from Marin Arts Council. During 2005, Ms. Sawyer and the Afsaneh Art & Culture Society were sought out by a local philanthropic organization, the Christensen Fund, to spearhead a project supporting the research and local development of dance and related arts in the remote Pamir Mountain regions of Tajikistan in Central Asia.
Presently she performs with Ballet Afsaneh and acts as the artistic and managing director. She also designs and creates many of the elaborate costumes worn by the group. Her greatest strengths as a choreographer/director are her ability to apply contemporary choreographic and production techniques to traditional material and inspire team-driven collaborative projects.