Performance Portfolio
photo credit: Nick Pierce
Burnt-Out Wife
Co-commissioned by SPACE and Portland Ovations
World Premiere October 17-19, 2019
Portland, ME
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Burnt-Out Wife explores the decay and detritus of a once-promising marriage. Separation, sex deprivation, and lack of communication add up to wanting to run from the popular, yet impossible binding contract. Using her comedic text-driven dance style, Sara Juli blows up marriage. Original Costume by Carol Farrell, Set Design by Pamela Moulton, Dramaturgy by Michelle Mola and Lighting Design by Justin Moriarty.
photo credit: Kristofer Alan Thompson
Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis
Premiered at SPACE Gallery
Portland, ME
October 23rd & 24th, 2015
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Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis is about motherhood- its beauty, challenges, isolation, comedy and influence on the human experience. This evening-length solo uses humor, movement, sounds, songs, text and audience participation to reveal “all that is awesome and all that sucks” when it comes to being a mother.
"She had the audience laughing out loud as she lay bare her personal secrets."
- The Portland Press Herald, Portland, ME
photo credit: Ben McKeown
The Lectern: rule by rule by rule
Created and performed with Claire Porter
Commissioned by American Dance Festival
Durham, NC
June 20 & 21, 2017
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Using movement, text, sound, song, and a catwalk runway, acclaimed comedic performers, Claire Porter and Sara Juli, upend our day-to-day, necessary-to-survive, rule-rituals in The Lectern, and find the hilarious in the rule-bending of our daily lives.
"The piece maintains it’s comedic high throughout, as the women enact etiquette lessons and lecture us on proper manners. Porter and Juli are a hilarious, dynamic pair." - The Dance Enthusiast
photo credit: Grant Halverson © ADF
Small Stories
Created and performed with Claire Porter
Premiered at American Dance Theater
Durham, NC
2015
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Two friends in big dresses tell, retell and tell again, small stories about little events with big impacts. Music by Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Puccini sung by Luciano Pavarotti.
"Whether detailing anxieties over a job interview or the frustrations of motherhood, the two had delightfully funny characterizations and zany senses of physical comedy"
- The News & Observer, Durham, NC
photo credit: Andrea Fischman
Death
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
New York, NY
2008
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Death, a dance-theater piece that addresses the taboo topic of death. After losing her father tragically to cancer, Juli experienced first-hand our culture’s inability to deal with death. She was amazed that something inevitable was so uncomfortable for people who, in particular, seemed to struggle to find the right thing to say and do. In this 50-minute solo performance, Juli uses movement, text, song, gesture, sounds, humor and audience interaction to present a reflection on the awkwardness of death.
photo credit: Derek Anderson
Deep Throat
Commissioned by American Dance Festival
Durham, NC
2006
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Liar. Gossip. Hypocrite. Sara Juli reveals insider information about the administration of the arts in her “latest permutation of words caught in her throat” (Gay City News) and the movement that follows. Deep Throat reveals the gossip behind the girl. Juli, “…a light of the downtown dance and theatre scene” (New Yorker), in her newest solo Deep Throat fusing movement, text and song to expose the humor and danger in leaking information to others.
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“A Dance Comic” - Durham Herald-Sun, NC
photo credit: Rachelle Roberts
The Money Conversation
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
New York, NY
2006
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If you risk losing everything, you stand to gain so much more in return. In her riskiest piece ever, Sara cashes-out her entire savings account of $5,000 and gives it away to audience members as a way to overcome her “money issues”.
“A Truly Generous Performance… Onstage Sara Juli gives of herself. And her bank account”
- The New York Times
photo credit: Jef Betz/Reel Alchemy Studios
Shadow Artist
Premiered at The Bushwick Starr
New York, NY
2004
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Is she an artist if she spends so little time making art? The character faces her fear of being an artist. Lighting by Jay Maury.
“Shadow Artist has good bones…Her fearless audience intrusions are different interactions each time and give the piece much of its edgy immediacy and comic brilliance”
- offoffoff.com, New York, NY
photo credit: Janusz Jaworski
How to Forgive Yourself in Bed
Premiered at Williamsburg Arts Nexus
Brooklyn, NY
2003
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This piece is the reconciliation of a promiscuous past using movement, text and song. Costume by Roxana Ramseur and Lighting by Jeremy Morris.
“In her pomo vaudeville monologue How to Forgive Yourself in Bed, Juli casts herself as a zaftig, ebullient beauty in a raucously sequined swim suit who has “promiscuity issues”…its nerve is undeniable”
- The Village Voice, New York, NY
photo credit: Owen Hughes
Burden
Premiered at Ontological-Hysteric Theater
New York, NY
2003
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On her grandmother’s deathbed, Sara promised she would marry a Jewish man. Burden is the letting go of that promise as the character faces her true love for a non-Jew, and her realization that she must leave her Holocaust past behind in order to live her own life.
“…some of the summer’s best work happened far from an ADF mainstage…Sara Juli’s engaging, experimental dance theater solo, Burden”
- Independent Weekly, Durham, NC
photo credit: Chris Ajemian
Five of My Forty Million Parts
Premiered at Dixon Place
New York, NY
2002
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Voted Best of Dance 2003 by the Independent Weekly, this work was created with the notion that, as emotional beings, our psyches are comprised of hundreds of “parts”.
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“…a humerous, hyper-critical play-by-play commentary on the moves she made while making them, before arm and upper body gestures ultimately suggested that reaching for perfection is a lot like reaching for the moon” - Independent Weekly, Durham, NC
photo credit: Jef Betz/Reel Alchemy Studios
Righteous Indignation
Premiered at Dixon Place
New York, NY
2001
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This piece marks Sara’s first dance that uses her self-developed movement-theater vocabulary. With anger as its main theme, this work provides a platform for the character’s rage.
“…quintessential angry naked dance that everyone must have in their repertory”
- Gay City News, New York, NY