Sharlyn Sawyer
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A personal statement—Bio follows.
With the world’s attention focused on Central Asia, recent years have seen my company, my artwork and the communities whom we represent catapulted to the frontlines of media attention. It is a particularly poignant time in history to be creating art that seeks to open hearts, celebrating the diversity, humanity and cultural achievements of the Iranian-, Turkish- and Afghan-American communities.
Most of the performing artists I have the honor of directing in Ballet Afsaneh, are women from Central Asian families. They have responded with enormous vitality and drive to reach out to audiences as cultural ambassadors. For some of our artists, participating in a public performance— even outside their countries of origin— often demands more than artistic craft: courage and true character are needed to overcome deep-seated cultural stigmatization and disapproval that can make an appearance on stage into a revolutionary act. Whether in a major theater, a cultural festival, museum or middle school, we are presenting this work, seeking to remind audiences and ourselves, that there is still beauty in this world that sometimes seems to have fallen in love with war.
KhodaHafez,
----Sharlyn Sawyer
Director, Ballet Afsaneh
Bio
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 her own 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. Sawyer has choreographed dozens of new works and expanded traditional Central Asian dance forms to contemporary choreographic and theatrical venues.
Presently she performs with Ballet Afsaneh and acts as both 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.
Sawyer has received cultural achievement awards from the Persian Center, the Iranian Society of New York, the Society of Iranian Professionals, the Turkish American Association, The Society of Afghan Professionals and other San Francisco Bay Area Iranian American and Afghan cultural organizations for her work. For the past five years she has been the recipient of yearly grant awards from the California Arts Council, Arts Council of Silicon Valley, the Marin Arts Council and the City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs.