The powerful vulnerability of a new mother. An embodied resilience that takes root and grows. What emerges when the body performs through the flood of challenges of motherhood? Sarah looks at her changing creative instrument and practice with fresh eyes. This work transcends the act of surpassing oneself daily and bears witness to the solitude experienced within a proliferation of life. Here is the birthing ritual of a Black Mixed-Race African Immigrant Woman and Mother.

Building on the themes of resistance in her first solo and resilience in her second, Sarah Elola pushes her study of transcendence and the body – particularly the female body – with her third creation, permeated with the theme of maternity. Drawing as always from the African art of living, she grounds herself in the conviction that we can and must create from nothing and from everything, starting with what we are in the here and now. In this way, she approaches her new reality as a mother, taking back this inner revolution to make it her new living and creative laboratory of observation, training, and archiving. The process is staggering but also extremely constraining, organic and contemplative, and engages every dimension of her being. She aims to capture a sample of the multitude of thoughts, reflections, sensations, emotions, and movements that fuse within herself and with her daughter. It’s with these raw materials and her own body in metamorphosis that she composes Ça prend un village.