Sara Juli will premiere “Burnt-Out Wife” in Portland in October. Photo by Allen Baldwin/The Story Board, courtesy of New England Foundation for the Arts
Falmouth dance artist Sara Juli has received a $45,000 grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts to support her latest project, “Burnt-Out Wife,” which explores the “decay and detritus of marriage.”
Portland Ovations and Space will present the premiere of “Burnt-Out Wife” Oct. 17-19. In a news release, the foundation said Juli “blows up marriage for a total reimagining” in the new piece. “Separation, sex deprivation, and lack of communication add up to wanting to run from the popular, yet impossible binding contract,” the release said.
The award was among 20 announced this week by the New England Foundation for the Arts through its National Dance Project. The awards totaled $1.8 million. The National Dance Project supports the creation and touring of new dance works. A panel of dance artists, presenters and arts administrators chose the 20 projects from among 170 applications, the foundation said.
Juli has created solo work since 2000. Her piece “Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis” premiered at Space in Portland in 2015 and has toured to the Bates Dance Festival, 3S Artspace, The Dance Complex, Asheville Masonic Temple and other places, including six performances at the American Dance Festival in June 2016 and four performances at The Chocolate Factory Theater in New York in October 2016. “Tense Vagina” received a 2015-16 New England Foundation for the Arts NEST Touring Grant and a New England Foundation for the Arts New England Dance Fund Grant.
She has performed in The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, London, Russia and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. In 2017, the Maine Arts Commission named her the Maine Fellow for the Performing Arts. She is the co-chair of the Bates Dance Festival Advisory Council.
In a Facebook post, Juli wrote, “Thank you to NEFA and the panelists. I am honored. A boost for ‘Burnt-Out Wife’! BIG SHOUT-OUT to my collaborators: Justin Moriarty, Pamela Moulton, Michelle Mola, Carol White Farrell, Sorcha Cribben-Merrill, Ryan MacDonald, and Devon Kelley-Yurdin.”
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