Talks | In Conversation with Curator Sara Sassanelli at Fire Station Artists’ Studios

Event Details

Join us in conversation with Sara Sassanelli, who joins us at FSAS as our next visiting curator in 2025 as part of the FSAS International Curator Residency programme.

Curator and producer Sara Sassanelli traces their journey from London’s DIY dance, music and club scenes into institutional contexts and, more recently, independent producing. Inspired by Michael Clark, whose practice fused ballet, punk, fashion, queer nightlife, Sassanelli reflects on how early encounters with skill, collaboration, and friendship shaped their approach to dance and curatorial work.

They situate their beginnings in resourceful, collective experimentation, working closely with artists on commissions, workshops, and live performances. At the ICA (2019–2024), Sassanelli re-established the experimental dance programme, developing hybrid formats that blurred boundaries between performance, exhibition, rave, and live music. Projects included commissions with choreographer Eve Stainton (Dykegeist, IMPACT DRIVER) and large-scale all-night events that expanded conventional performance frameworks.

Last year Sara founded Alice Agency with Jared Davis, producing international projects that support experimental dancers and musicians. As a producer and curator they work with artists including Eve Stainton, Billy Bultheel, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Jack Hogan and Florence Sinclair.

Through their work, Sassanelli examines how curating and producing can create conditions for liveness and experimentation, even amid diminishing institutional support. Sara will introduce their Fire Station project, focusing on ‘groupwork’ in choreographic practices.