Sarah U余衍晴

Sarah Hin Ching U 余衍晴 (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian emerging dancer, choreographer, and creator in live, digital and multimedia performances. My main intention is to create performance experiences that are engaging, reflective and community-oriented. I gravitate towards stories in human desire, identity, relationship; and is grounded in experiences that have touched me deeply and personally. Collaboration is essential to my practice, and I prioritize hosting and creating space to share knowledge and skills in between, and outside of art forms.
Sarah’s live and digital work has been presented by National Arts Centre (Ottawa), The Dance Centre (Vancouver), New Works (Vancouver), DanceWorks (Toronto), Vines Art Festival (Vancouver), Impulse theatre (Victoria, BC), Free Flow Dance Theatre (Saskatoon), SpringWorks (Ontario) among others. As a dance artist, she has performed works by dance companies and choreographers in Montreal (Danse Carpe Diem, Emmanuel Jouthe), Vancouver (Judith Garay, Cheryl Prophet, Foolish Operations/Julie Lebel, Kylah Powell, Alvin Tolentino) and Saskatoon (Free Flow Dance Theatre/Jackie Latendresse). Highlights include performing in the Dancing on the Edge Festival 2019, Vancouver Biennale 2019, Richmond World Festival 2019, Vines Art festival 2020,2021 and Nuit Blanche 2021 (Saskatoon). In 2022, I received the Professional Performing Artist Award from BC Arts Council and is 1 of the 3 annual Artist-In-Residence at ArtStarts Gallery.
Sarah graduated Simon Fraser University in June 2021 with a BFA in dance and kinesiology. During her time in SFU, she has trained with Megan Walker-Straight (Cunningham technique), Judith Garay (Graham technique), Marla Eist (Ballet technique), Rob Kitsos (Contemporary technique), Henry Daniels (Contemporary technique) and Margarida Macieira (Gaga). In addition, she has performed in multiple SFU repertory shows ,student choreography shows and has been awarded scholarships to train with Helen Walkey, Shay Kuebler and the Vancouver Contact Improvisation Festival.
Photo by Laura Zeke.