Sara Mikolai is a choreographer, dancer, interdisciplinary artist, and researcher born in Berlin. She is of Sri Lankan-Tamil-German descent and today is based between Berlin and Sri Lanka. In her work, she activates sensory experiences and situations through live performance including dance, performance and sound, and she further extends her choreographic practice through other media, such as video, installation and writing.
Sara's work is deeply rooted in her engagement with Bharatanatyam, which she since early childhood has studied under her mother in her school in the context of the Tamil refugee-migrant community in Berlin. Since 1994, her dance context has been rooted in this community, engaging through training, teaching and organizing. Today, she focuses on a critical and poetic engagement with epistemologies, aesthetics and practice of dance, balancing an equilibrium of contextualizing the personal, historical and contemporary in art and everyday life.
Since 2015, Sara's practice has evolved to explore dance through a listening practice, delving into the intricate relationship between dance and music, movement and sound. Her longterm inquiries into dance have led her to engage with both artistic practice and research, allowing her to locate her work beyond the diasporic context and within South Asia itself. She performs, teaches, and works in various contexts across Europe, South Asia, and beyond.