Anya Allegra Saugstad
/ Furious Grace Dance Theatre
GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER FOR SFU
Creating a new work for Simon Fraser University Fall 2025.
Biography
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Anya Saugstad is a dancer, choreographer, and the artistic director of Furious Grace Dance Theatre. She is based in Vancouver Canada, on the unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh', Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh, and xwməθkwəyə̓ m First Nations.
Furious Grace Dance Theatre creates ferocious and distinctive live performance works for theaters and outdoors where collaboration, intuition and autonomy are at the forefront. Anya Saugstad’s work as a performance maker is concerned with ecological grief, femininity, ritual, and juxtaposition of beauty and grit which manifests itself as live performance works, dance, nature based movement art, writing, workshopping, and collaboration.
"Through my work, I bring together artists from many backgrounds, experiences, ages, and identities to imagine and manifest work that speaks not only to the beauty, but anger and strength of humanity and femininity. “I like beauty that has teeth.” (Ocean Voung).
Through nature based movement practices, spacious research, heterarchical collaboration and with joy and honest ambition moving the work forward, I create rooms where artists are encouraged to build autonomy, practice resilience, meet one another in each moment, and strengthen trust in themselves."
Anya has created more than twenty works outdoors and in the theatre for companies such as Springboard Danse, Ballet Edmonton, Arts Umbrella, Lamondance, Simon Fraser University, Coastal City Ballet and her work has been presented throughout Canada and the USA. Anya Saugstad was the recipient of The Dance Centre Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award in 2024.
ocean roaring
ocean roaring
‘Ocean Roaring’ is a site specific live dance and violin performance that follows the stories of six women on the shore of the ocean at dusk. ‘Ocean Roaring’ was created on the beach in Vancouver BC in 2019, was made into a film in July 2020, and then toured live to Kelowna in 2021. ‘Ocean Roaring’ has been supported by Dance West Network Dance on Tour, The Rotary Centre for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, New Works, and Vines Art Festival. This no tech, environmentally conscious work, focuses on tireless and urgent movement as a means to describe distance and longing between people and the land, and directs attention to the ocean as a scarce and vital resource. It duets the power of women’s bodies dancing with the power of the water.
'Ocean Roaring' was created in Vancouver at the shore of kits beach and first performed at vines art festival in 2019. From there, the work developed into a film that was shared virtually in festivals in 2020 including Vines Art Online Festival, Made in BC, and ArtsStarts. The work was toured live to Kelowna in 2021. This piece has been supported through Canada Council for the Arts, the Rotary Centre for the Arts, Vines Art Festival, and Dance West Network. We are looking for more opportunities to share this work with other bodies of water, communities and audiences.
Photos by: Aaron Hemens
