Paper Mountains is a work that explores how we hold memory through movement. The piece uses choreography created during many months in solitude, and translates that movement on to bodies, spaces, and paper planes, to describe a fragmented story of loneliness, celebration, and longing.

About the Artist

Anya Allegra Saugstad is a dancer and choreographer based in Vancouver BC, on the unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh’, Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh, and xwməθkwəyə̓ m First Nations.

Anya trained at ArtsUmbrella, and has a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University. As a dancer, Anya has toured with Action at a Distance / Vanessa Goodman through the USA, Canada, and Germany performing “Graveyards and Gardens” and “Core/Us” (2021-2023).

Anya Saugstad is the Artistic Director of Furious Grace Dance Theatre, (originally Judith Garay’s company Dancers Dancing). Furious Grace / Anya Saugstad create live collaborative performance works in theaters and outdoors. Anya builds vigorous and physical ensemble choreography to express stories that encompass strength, celebration, and yearning. Her work is often inspired by nature and animals.

“The inspiration for Paper Mountains drew from seeing videos that my collaborators and friends were posting online of themselves dancing alone during the COVID-19 lockdown. I was inspired to share these intimate and lonely moments with more people, and so I collected the videos I had taken of myself dancing over the year, re-learned the dances in these videos, and then transposed that material into a collection of choreographed ensemble scenes.”