Sara June
Sara June is a dancemaker, performance artist and movement educator based in Boston, MA. She makes art and teaches movement from the perspective that the body is a permeable vessel from which all things in the natural world can be sensed and communicated. Her performances mine the vast stores of material recorded within the body as a record of life history and organismic development. Since 2006, she has collaborated closely with sound artist Max Lord, as half of the performance duo Lord and June on movement/sound and visual installation works sited in unconventional public settings. Lord and June have particularly enjoyed creating performances in collaboration with other artists including Yuka Takahashi, Liz Roncka, Nathan Andary, Steve Norton, and Matthew Samolis. Notable past commissioned performances include a gallery performance for an exhibition of the internationally acclaimed Hiroshima Panels by Japanese artists Iri and Toshi Maruki at Boston University and an outdoor movement and spatialized-sound work for Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog x FLO installations in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace.
Sara June works primarily in the Japanese post-war performance form Butoh, having studied and performed this form since 2001. She has studied with Yuko Kaseki, Hiroko Tamano, Natsu Nakajima, Katsura Kan, Su-En, Diego Pinon, Vangeline, and Deborah Butler. She has studied Noguchi Taiso with Mari Osanai and body weather with Zack Fuller. She has studied contemporary movement improvisation with Liz Roncka and Olivier Besson. She earned her 500-hour yoga teaching certification in the Vinyasa tradition with Barbara Benagh. She performed as a member of the butoh troupes Kitsunebutoh (BOS) from 2001-2004, and the Vangeline Theater (NYC) from 2006-2008. Since 2009, she has been a member of Boston’s oldest experimental arts collective, the Mobius Artists Group. Sara currently teaches an open weekly butoh methods class at Studio @550 in Cambridge and is the Director of the annual Boston Butoh Festival which had its inaugural year in 2019. Sara holds a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, an EdM in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University, and an MSW in Clinical Social Work from Boston University.
The works of Sara June and Lord and June have been presented by the Boston University Art Galleries, Boston University Dance Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, Mobius, Green Street Studios, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, Bridgewater State University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, REACHFestival at the Wistariahurst Museum, Somerville Artbeat Festival, Berwick Research Institute, the Bumpkin Island Arts Encampment, Jonathan Shorr Gallery, Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Le Petit Versailles, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, Le Lieu Centre for Performance en art actuel, among others. Residencies include Workspace Brussels in Belgium (with Yuka Takahashi) and the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment on the Boston Harbor Islands (with Nathan Andary). Her performances have been chronicled in several publications including This Moment: Missives from Another World, a photographic history of the Boston performance art scene by Mobius photographer Robert Raymond, and An Introduction to Performance Art, an art historical review by the Los Angeles sculptor Robert Fontenot.
