Led by twin choreographers Hilary Brown-Istrefi and Briana Brown-Tipley, Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is a bi-national performance collective celebrating 12 years of collaborative and interdisciplinary storytelling. Their performance and film commissions have been presented and screened internationally at venues including The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (Toronto); Base: Experimental Arts + Space (Seattle); Archaeological Museum of Messenia (Greece); Centre d'Art Marnay Art Centre (France); Danspace Project, BRIC, and New York Live Arts (NYC). As Dancemakers’ 2023-24 Guest Curators and a current resident of the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), S.A.S. is developing Upstairs, In Our Bedroom, slated to premiere in 2026. Awards, recognition, and funding include Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts’ 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award Nominee for Outstanding Production (This is NOT a Remount); Jerome Foundation’s 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist and Alternate; Foundation for Contemporary Arts' Emergency Grantee (2022 and 2017); Queens Council on the Arts' Queens Arts Fund 2020 New Work Grantee; and New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts’ 2019 Artist Fellow.

Artist Statement

Employing a truly interdisciplinary approach to storytelling, our work relies on collaborative and experimental practices within the visual and performing arts to reveal the behind the scenes stories, the traumas and triumphs that “History” has passed by. Through the construction and deconstruction of narrative, languages of gesture, and visual environments, we explore the space where real and imagined characters intersect. Our work itself is always an act of exchange; an exchange of ideas and modalities and, above all, an exchange with the audience. Rooted in our multi-racial, national, and artistic backgrounds, we embrace friction and contradictions as entry points to both new aesthetic explorations and cross-cultural discourses. This dynamic is demonstrative of our commitment to confronting mainstream assumptions of what stories get to be told on-screen/stage and by whom.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)