Mission Statement

      For the dancer, space itself is sacred ground - an opportunity to grow, to challenge the status quo, and to become ecstatic. Any space where people dance is sacred, as it is where we are becoming our most basic and divine selves.
     Sacred Space Dance is a contemporary dance company based in New York City. We are a group of artists, educators, and activists who dance. Drawing from the theory and aesthetic of Post-Modern Dance, dances of the African diaspora, and Yoga, the dances become vessels for reflecting our base humanity, igniting our passions, and communing with the divine within and around us. We take traditions into the future, dancing in theaters, parks, schools, beaches, and anywhere our bodies have room to speak. We use movement to seek truth and plant seeds. With athletic articulation, we aim to discover a universal experience from our individual realities.
Rainy Demerson began her dance training with Ballet at the age of three. She also trained in Jazz for 10 years. In high school she fell in love with Modern Dance and began to choreograph. While earning her B.A. from UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures Department, she continued her studies in Ballet and Modern Dance and added Improvisation and dances from the African and Asian diasporas to her palette. She has had the honor of studying from Joe Goode, Gary Masters, David Rousseve, Simone Forti, and William Forsythe. In 2001 she received a grant to study dance in Indonesia where she participated in intercultural artistic exchanges. In 2004 Her love of Brazilian culture took her to Brazil where she studied traditional and contemporary Brazilian Dance and Capoeira for four months. In 2009 she completed a seven-week intensive study of Contemporary African Dance at L'ecole des Sables in Senegal, alongside students representing five continents and over ten countries. This experience inspired her to return to Senegal in 2010 to choreograph, produce, and perform in a new project, Le Pardon est le Joyau des Braves (Forgiveness is the Jewel of the Brave). This is a 30 minute work which includes a solo, duet, and group piece which was created in part by guiding the dancers' improvisations and facilitating intercultural collaboration. She currently lives in New York, where she was delighted to work as a dancer with Rebollar Dance, Mezclado Movement, and as a dancer/choreographer with Dance Warrior Project. Her own choreography is characterized by the notion that vulnerability is strong and beautiful. She takes an honest approach to movement exploration, creating original phrases from thematic improvisations. Her movement vocabulary exists in the liminal spaces between national borders, notions of spirituality, and definitions of race and gender. Drawing largely from the theory and aesthetic of Post-Modern Dance, dances of the African diaspora, and Yoga, the dances become vessels for reflecting our base humanity, igniting our passions, and communing with the divine within and around us.

  

        Choreographer/Artistic Director

Rainy Demerson

Rainy is a life-long dancer and world traveler. She has studied dance in Indonesia, Cuba, Brazil, and Senegal. She graduated from the World Arts and Cultures Department at UCLA with a concentration in Dance, and holds an MA in Dance Education from New York University. As an educator, she has worked with at-risk youth all over the city, including founding an Intercultural Dance program in Brooklyn. She has produced dance concerts in St. Louis, Senegal and New York City. Her work is characterized by the notion that strength and beauty are found in moments of great vulnerability. 

www.vimeo.com/rainydemerson