FOR SITE-SPECIFIC & EXPERIMENTAL ART
CLICK HERE FOR THE 2025 FESTIVAL - August 1-10, 2025
Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, and surrounding areas
Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, and surrounding areas
"Volo" Sarus Bird puppet flies along Wrightsville Beach, Photo by Harry Schnitzler
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CREATIVITY. EXPLORATION. CONNECTION.
The SARUS Festival presents exciting, non-commercial, professional, intellectually stimulating, performance events and outreach in the greater Wilmington, NC area. The festival brings in national and international seasoned and emerging artists to inspire and become inspired, to share and collaborate, teach and perform.
SARUS Festival creates platforms for presentation and exchange for a broad range of artistic expressions, from dance and theatre, to visual art, installation, film, lecture demonstrations, talks, workshops, youth programs, social events, parties, and more. In past years we have generally presented about 40 performing groups that involved a total of about 70 participating artists in 6-10 locations. We are curious to see how many artists and supporters will come together in 2025 to bring SARUS Festival back after a 6 year long hiatus (you know, pandemic and all that stuff...). The SARUS Festival is the heart-piece of our organization's work in New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick Counties and consists of performances, workshops, labs, talks, gatherings, exhibitions, master classes, and dance jams. This year, SARUS Festival also includes a SARUS School, and Sar-lets our children's and youth program again. In honor of dance and the beautiful wtlands of the area, the festival is named after the SARUS crane, grus antigone. Below you can watch these magnificent birds sing and dance. |
Press received for SARUS 2015
A Quick HISTORY
Organized by the ALBAN ELVED DANCE COMPANY, formerly a 501-c-3 non-profit charitable organziation, the 'SARUS Festival' first took place in and around Wilmington in the summer of 2007. Back then it began as a dance festival for avant-garde dance. Its site-specific and interdisciplinary approach was and still is unusual for the area. We received great feedback and enthusiastic participation. Some people even moved to the area because of SARUS! Wow! .... The following year we opened the festival up to all art forms and the festival grew to two weeks of programming, outreach and workshops, performances and lectures and film showings. Performers from New York City, Chicago, North Carolina and many other places brought exciting, unusual, daring and inspiring performances to audiences of all ages. Performances took place at Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach on the beach strands, in downtown Wilmington, in Burgaw, on the UNCW campus, the Red Barn Studio Theatre, at UNCW and at Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC. About the name...SARUS 'alban elved' is the Celtic name for the fall equinox, literally translating to "the light of the water". Water often finds a place in the company's works in actual or metaphorical form. The SARUS Festival was named after the sarus crane, Grus antigone, who had been a symbol for the company for years. The name "Sarus" has a Sanskrit origin and means "of water", "lake or wetland". SARUS Festival began as a dance festival. In fact, in Tamil the term "Sarasa-naadanam" refers to graceful dancing. |
