Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be sharing an excerpted performance of Upstairs, In Our Bedroom during Amanda+James’ 4th annual Summer Happenings Festival, curated by Amanda Hameline and Brendan Drake.

Taking place at Valentino Pier Park and Coffey Street Studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the free one-day event will feature live performances and video and sound installations by: Asia Stewart, Stephanie Acosta, Same As Sister, Janessa Clark, Glenn Potter-Takata and evan ray suzuki, Amanda Hameline, Alex Romania and Stacey Lynn Smith, and evan ray suzuki.

Inspired by this year’s curatorial theme, “composure in the face of chaos”, the festival offerings will wrestle with the idea of how artists function amidst constant rupture — rupture in our city, country and world; in our economy and ecology; in our personal lives and broader communities…in everything. How do we compose our work and ourselves in this environment? How do we keep making silly little art projects and how do we insist on their importance? Is the confusion of art-making reparative in this moment of rupture? Or are we just kidding ourselves?

For more info visit: amandaplusjames.com/event/summer-happenings-festival

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is thrilled to announce that they are a three-time recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant in Dance.

S.A.S. will use their 2025 Emergency Grant towards an excerpted performance of Upstairs, In Our Bedroom at Coffey Street Studio in Brooklyn, New York as part of A+J’s Summer Happenings Festival on July 27.

For more info visit: foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/grants

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be sharing early research and ideas for Upstairs, In Our Bedroom as part of HERE’s Resident Artist Workshops (RAW) Series. The program will include a post-show talkbalk with S.A.S.’s co-directors and choreographers Hilary Brown-Istrefi and Briana Brown-Tipley.

Revealing the powerful and painful intersections between twinship, blackness, madness, and art-making, Upstairs, In Our Bedroom is a multimedia dance performance that radically reimagines Same As Sister’s dual autobiography next to the true story of the Caribbean-British outsider artists, June-Alison and Jennifer Gibbons (a.k.a. ‘The Silent Twins’).

For more info visit: here.org/shows/here-raw

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is elated that their first ever podcast, Dismantling Anti-Black Logics: Creating Alternative Forms of Knowledge and Storytelling, was in the company of Couched Podcast hosts Dr. Romy Reading, PhD and Dr. Ally Merchant and fellow invited guest, psychoanalyst Chanda D. Griffin.

Podcast Description: Join us for a heartfelt conversation between psychoanalyst Chanda D. Griffin and choreographers Hilary Brown-Istrefi and Briana Brown-Tipley. Our guests share their embodied and scholarly knowledge about anti-blackness and creativity. They inspire and challenge us to think beyond the confines of white supremacist structures and invite us into new imaginaries.

To listen visit: couchedpodcast.org/dismantling-anti-black-logics

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be joined by York University’s 3Dance research team, VR specialist Lora Appel and disability arts advisor Rachel da Silveira Gorman, to give an artist talk with augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) demonstration about their collaboration on Upstairs, In Our Bedroom.

The event is as a co-presentation with Dancemakers as part of Workman Arts’ 2023 RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FESTIVAL (Oct 27 - Nov 5)—The first and largest arts and mental health festival in the world—and will be hosted at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Using art as the entry point to illuminate and investigate the realities and mythologies surrounding mental illness and addiction, RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS spotlights the human capacity for endurance in the face of great challenges. This year’s tagline “Mind the Gaps” considers gaps in infrastructure and the systematic “cracks” people, particularly those with lived experience of mental health and addiction, fall through. It is a call to think through what is missing and how things could be better.

For more info visit: workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) was visited by CBC Arts’ journalist Genelle Levy during their Dancemakers-supported residency at Dance Arts Institute to discuss their history as a performance collective and current project in development, Upstairs, In Our Bedroom.

Revealing the powerful and painful intersections between twinship, blackness, madness, and art-making, Upstairs, In Our Bedroom is a multimedia dance performance that radically reimagines Same As Sister’s dual autobiography next to the true story of the Caribbean-British outsider artists, June-Alison and Jennifer Gibbons (a.k.a. ‘The Silent Twins’).

To read, The twin sisters bringing the tragic story of the 'Silent Twins' to the stage, visit: cbc.ca/arts

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is incredibly honored to announce that their performance work, This is NOT a Remount, originally commissioned as part of The Miserere Project, a co-production with Citadel + Compagnie, has been nominated for a Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts’ 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Production (Dance Division). Congratulations to all the 2022 Nominees!

For more info visit: tapa.ca/nominations

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) joined commissioned artist/director Aaron Duffy’s imaginative reality as a three-headed monster for Apple’s The Illusionists series. The commercial was produced by Special Guest and 1stAveMachine as part of the #ShotoniPhone campaign.

For more info visit: instagram.com/p/CgMyglflZ0r

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is thrilled to announce that they are a two-time recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant in Dance.

S.A.S. will use their 2022 Emergency Grant towards the world premiere performances of This is NOT a Remount at The Citadel: Ross Center for Dance in Toronto, Canada as part of The Miserere Project from May 18-21.

For more info visit: foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/grants

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be sharing an in-person screening of This is NOT a Remount, as part of Spring Movement | Crossroads: Curated by Pioneers Go East Collective. The program will also include live-performances by Angela Schöpke Gonzalez and Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett.

Each year, CPR – Center for Performance Research presents two weekend-long festivals of works by local and international emerging and established artists in dance and performance. Spring Movement and Fall Movement feature finished works and premieres by six different artists, companies, or collectives, and often include unique collaborations with filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists.

For more info visit: cprnyc.org/events/2022springmovement

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) invite you to join them for the virtual screening of This is NOT a Remount, a video collaboration with performers ALEXA GRÆ, Annie Wang & Jessie Young, dramaturg Susan Mar Landau, and videographer Yuan Liu.

The screening will be followed by a pre-recorded artist q&a* with live chat to provide insight into S.A.S.'s creative team and process during the making of This is NOT a Remount, as both a commissioned video and live-performance project.

The link will go live on Same As Sister's YouTube channel at the date and time specified above.

Livestream Link: youtu.be/HMFKe51cU6U

*Captioning will be provided during the artist q&a portion of the livestream.

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is incredibly honored and excited to be a part of Citadel + Compagnie’s 21/22 Season in their hometown of Toronto, Canada. S.A.S.’s This is NOT a Remount will be performed as part of The Miserere Project, a shared evening of three world premieres by Penny Couchie, Same As Sister (S.A.S.), and Brodie Stevenson, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of David Earle’s masterwork, Miserere.

"The pandemic has highlighted the importance of the performing arts, and its unique ability to connect people in a shared human experience,” says Artistic Director Laurence Lemieux. “The 21/22 Season brings together a wide range of artists exploring how and where we connect. It is an extremely interesting time to be programming, as we will all be looking at work through a new post-pandemic lense. I hope for this season to pay tribute to the power of the creative process to drive artists forward, and the strength of artists’ desire to continue to provoke and inspire through dance.”

For more info visit: announcing-citadel-21-22-season

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be presenting an in-person work-in-progress showing of their upcoming commission, This is NOT a Remount, as part of their rescheduled 2019/2020 Base Residency at Base: Experimental Arts + Space in Seattle, Washington.

This is NOT a Remount, is an interdisciplinary reenactment as tribute to the 41st anniversary of Canadian choreographer David Earle’s Miserere. Merging true and imagined stories from Toronto Dance Theatre’s 1981 production, the performance is a behind-the-scenes homage to the original cast, three of whom were lost to the AIDS epidemic.

For more info visit: thisisbase.org/same-as-sister-residency

Audience must RSVP to attend this limited capacity event. Proof of vaccination and masks are required.

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be sharing an animated video of Kallax, during Pioneers Go East Collective’s Crossroads Series. This virtual edition of Crossroads, a series dedicated to empowering LGBTQ and feminist artists in dialogue with their communities, will also feature video works by: Yasmeen Enahora & Ori Flomin, and Beth Graczyk.

The free event will be hosted on Zoom.

For more info visit: eventbrite.com/e/crossroads-same-as-sister-flomin-and-enahora-graczyk

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is honored to announce that they were selected as a recommended Alternate and Finalist for the Jerome Foundation’s 2021–22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Dance, and are the recipients of a grant towards the creation and production of new work.

Congratulations to the Fellows: Ephrat Asherie, Vie Boheme, J. Bouey, DejaJoelle, Fana Fraser, Jerron Herman, Herb Johnson III, LeilAwa, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, and Taja Will, as well as the other Finalists: Hadar Ahuvia, Maria Bauman-Morales, Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Moriah Evans, Kayla Farrish, Davalois Fearon, Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, Malcolm Low, Kaleena Miller, Music From The Sole (Leonardo Sandoval, Gregory Richardson), Christopher Núñez, Valerie Oliveiro, and Mariana Valencia.

For more info visit: jeromefdn.org/jerome-hill-artist-fellows-2021-22

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) is honored to announce that they have been awarded a Queens Council on the Arts’ 2020 Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant in Multi-Disciplinary Performance.

They will use the Grant to support the creation of their work, This is NOT a Remount, a commission for The Citadel’s 2022 Bright Nights Series, Toronto.

For more info visit: queenscouncilarts.org/2020-qaf-awardees

Same As Sister (S.A.S.)’s dance film short, Odd Jewels: Beauty Under Mask, will be screened as part of the Erasmus+ 2019/2020 Educational Program (Active Student-Active Citizen): Introduction to Video-Art for Teenagers––a partnership between Video Art Miden and the 2nd Junior High School of Kalamáta, Greece.

For more info visit: https://www.festivalmiden.gr/en/educational-program-introduction-to-video-art-for-teenagers/

Same As Sister (S.A.S.) will be sharing a work-in-progress excerpt of Kallax (2019–2020 Women in Motion NYC Commission) during Pioneers Go East Collective’s Crossroads: Crosswinds, Crosscurrents, Crossfires at Judson Memorial Church.

This edition of Crossroads––a series dedicated to empowering LGBTQ+ and Feminist artists in dialogue with their communities––will also feature performances by Chris Riffle, Proteo Media/Bree Breeden and Kathleen Kelley, and Erick Montes/Danceable Projects. This is a free event open to the community.

For more info visit: https://pioneersgoeast.org/crossroads-series