Sara Juli’s Midseason Mood & Gay Aesthetic: Based on a True Story

PERFORMANCES
3/21 at 7pm
3/22 at 7pm

ABOUT SARA JULI’S MIDSEASON MOOD:

As women’s autonomy faces unprecedented threats, Sara Juli’s work-in-progress “Midseason Mood” blends stand-up comedy and dance-theater to reclaim what culture tries to erase: our power, our pleasure, our resilience. Set to Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, this is a woman in a midlife mood to kick some ass.

Sara Juli’s newest solo is a dance-theater comedy exploring midlife—a time that stretches well past halfway when you’re no longer emerging but suspended in the messy abundance of reflection. The work centers women in midlife finding agency in a culture that renders aging women invisible. Through the integration of stand-up comedy with choreographed and improvised movement, Sara mines the connectivity of the female experience at midlife—the yearning for intimacy, the dangers of “productivity” as virtue, the vulnerability required to be kind to yourself rather than punitive, and the radical act of saying “you are enough.”

Maine-based performance artist Sara Juli (she/her) has been creating and performing innovative comedic dance-theater for over 25 years. She has been fortunate to tour her work to venues worldwide including: American Dance Festival, Dixon Place, Performance Space New York, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, Judson Church, TEDxDirigo, Bates Dance Festival, Bowdoin College, Connecticut College, Dance Complex, SPACE Gallery, 3S Artspace, Capital Center for the Arts, Napa Valley Opera House, Artown Festival (NV), Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Noorderzon Festival (The Netherlands), Chelsea Theatre (London), Aotea Centre (New Zealand), TSEH (Russia) and many more. Her work has been commissioned by American Dance Festival, Performance Space 122 (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), SPACE Gallery (ME), Portland Ovations (ME), and The Strand Theatre (ME). Sara is the Founder/Director of Surala Consulting, a fundraising consultancy helping non-profits and artists build and execute fundraising strategies. She was awarded the Arts Management Award from Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2013, and has been an advisor to the grantees of The Boston Foundation’s Live Arts and Next Step Programs. @sarajulimoves

ABOUT “GAY AESTHETIC” & ALEXANDER DAVIS:

In 2024, Alexander Davis was invited to join a prestigious dance project with one condition: would he be “willing to lose weight in order to fit the gay aesthetic of the work.” Alex declined the job but embraced the experience as creative fuel for his newest solo. Gay Aesthetic: Based on a True Story is a 45-minute dance-theater work that excavates the history of queer aesthetics, survival tools, and the painful reality of discrimination within our own community. Drawing from Hal Fischer’s pioneering Gay Semiotics research, hanky codes, vintage physique photography, and contemporary queer scholarship, this piece blends lecture and movement into what some critics have called “an unearned and over-dramatic existential crisis.” The work asks urgent questions: How has gossip functioned as community support? Is cruising essential to queer survival? Why does he love Gabby Windey but not Colton Underwood? Is that internalized homophobia? Misogyny? Both? Created with writer/director Jeremy Brothers and featuring an original hyperpop score composed and performed by musician Tyler Leif, Gay Aesthetic was developed through residency support from the Samuel H. Scripps Studios and the American Dance Festival, where it premiered in December 2025.

Alexander Davis is a Boston-based homosexual, performer, fiber artist, and choreographer. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Dean College. He holds an MFA from Smith College (2023) and a BA from Keene State College (2014). Davis was named a City of Boston Artist Fellow in 2019. His performance work includes collaborations with Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans, Boston Lyric Opera, Global Arts Live, and Urbanity Dance. He assisted choreographer Monica Bill Barnes on Greta Gerwig’s film Little Women (2019). Davis’s fiber art series Federation of Athletic Gentleman (F.A.G.) was exhibited at Childs Gallery in Interlaced: The Fabric of Art, which he curated. His curatorial work includes Gaze: A History of Male Physique Photography and Closet to Quarantine: Queer Art Then and Now.

This show was funded in part by New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund, with generous support from the Aliad Fund at the Boston Foundation, in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the six New England state arts agencies, as well as the Franklin Cultural Council, Samuel H. Scripps Studios at the American Dance Festival, The City of Boston Opportunity Fund, DanceLab at the Boston Center for the Arts, Next Steps in Boston Dance Grant, and additional development support courtesy of Urbanity Dance

If you or a guest in your party has accessibility needs for this event, please contact Joe Juknievich at joe@dancecomplex.org or (617) 547-9363.