Devotion
by Sarah Nagle

Devotion is a 20-day visual performance and installation showcasing the daily movement practices of multi-disciplinary artist Sarah Nagle. During the duration of her piece, Sarah will create a room-size painting, working with ease, delight, and diligence, as they strive to do their best while still accepting the current and challenging circumstances of the times.

Each morning, they will perform a daily ritual of ballet class, followed by a quick meditation and lunch. Then they set to work- starting by making a signature geometric grid that covers the walls and floors. Once the grid is complete, they paint within the structure of the grid with saturated, bold pigments. As the picture unfolds each day, a multidimensional, kaleidoscopic world is revealed around the dancer.

Devotion is a durational and visual performance poem. It is an act of resistance; showcasing the daily practice of simplicity and movement to create beauty in the epicenter of chaos.

About the Artist

Sarah Nagle is a New York-based multi-disciplinary artist working with dance performance and visual art. Their writing on gender and dance has been published by Dance Magazine Online and Cultured Magazine, and their durational performance installations have been shown in Times Square and One World Trade through Chashama and during Art Basel Miami with RAW POP UP.

Nagle studied ballet under Deborah Boughton at the Center for Ballet in Syracuse, NY. They received Honors in Dance Composition and Dance Movement Therapy from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and continued to train as a scholarship student with Jennifer Muller/The Works in New York, NY. They have collaborated with Justin Ross (STREB), and they danced for Salvatore LaRussa, Mario Bermudez-Gil (Batsheva), and Jessica Taylor/DAMAGEDANCE. Sarah is currently studying Zero Balancing with Michael Oruch and continues to study ballet with Sharon Milanese and Caitlin Scranton (Lucinda Childs).

Currently, Nagle is evolving a visual art performance project that uses meditative practices to create infinite structural realities that begin with the same geometric grid. Their newest work shows a continued interest in time-space as a canvas, color/light as a building block, and the practice of expanding presence in performance.

To learn more about Sarah Nagle and her work, visit her website and her Instagram.

About Enliven NYC

Four New York City Avante-Garde performance artists will each receive a stipend to present daily live interactive performances at four locations throughout Manhattan that will spark your imagination. “Chashama is returning to its roots. Live window installations like we had in the good old days,” says Anita Durst, founder of Chashama.

This grant was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts.