Alchemy Performance is engaged in several collaborations, on both an ongoing and a single project basis. Scroll down to read about our current projects:

Alchemy Dance Theater: a contemporary global dance company

HYBRID: a forum for new evolutions in contemporary global performance

Alchemy Performance Collaborations: ongoing projects with musicians, DJs, theater and installation artists, and movers in all disciplines: contemporary dance, yoga, new circus, classical Indian dance, and beyond

Alchemy Dance Theater is a contemporary global dance company. Core artists are Paige Stevenson, Irina Akulenko, and Sarah Johansson Locke. Anasma Vuong and Pete List are associate artists.

Sarah Johansson Locke is the artistic director of Alchemy Performance and Alchemy Dance Theater. Click here for her bio.

Paige Stevenson is a performer, costume designer, and event coordinator whose work has appeared throughout NYC for many years. She created an installation and solo dance piece for Red Dive's Inhabited, which won a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award). Paige has studied and performed bellydance with Anahid Sofian, Dalia Carella, Andrea Anwar, and Sarah Johansson Locke. She is a founding member of Alchemy Dance Theater.




Irina Akulenko is a performer, teacher and choreographer with a wild imagination and a burning passion for the arts of all genres. Although she discovered Middle Eastern dance purely by chance, her interest in expression started at an early age and was channeled into ballet training, in addition to piano lessons, chorus and drawing. However, belly dance became her main addiction which she sustained by seeking instruction with numerous New York-based teachers. For the last 7 years, she explored both Egyptian Cabaret and American Tribal belly dance and now enjoys fusing these styles as well as everything in between. Today, Irina is a member of two professional dance companies, Alchemy Dance Theater and BellyQueen, and is dedicated to continuing her dance education, always looking for new ways to be inspired. She is also a member of Public Urban Ritual Experiment (P.U.R.E.) and enjoys collaborating with other local artists. Furthermore, Irina holds a Bachelors degree in Political Science, and has a strong interest in women's issues and visual arts.


Anasma is a born dancer specializing in Classical Bellydance and World Dance Fusion. She grew up in Paris with her Vietnamese father and Tunisian mother. Anasma has studied dance styles such as Folkloric Bellydance, Salsa, Tribal, Hip Hop, Modern Jazz, Kathak, Flamenco, Afro-Caribbean, Jazz, Contemporary, and Tahitian, as well as theater and gymnastics. Since 1997, she has performed as part of two French Bellydance companies in famous Parisian venues, dance festivals, TV shows, concerts, charity events, weddings, and restaurants - often before as many as 3000 spectators. Besides being a performer, Anasma is also a teacher and choreographer. After living in France and India, and getting her Masters degree in Business Management, Anasma has decided to settle in New York City and share her talents with Bellyqueen and Alchemy Dance Theater. Anasma uses Bellydance to express her deepest emotions, and she fights to elevate it as a noble art form. www.anasmadance.com


Pete List is a beatboxer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who performs with various diverse music, dance and theater projects at venues ranging from PS 122, Joe's Pub, BAM, and The Knitting Factory to the Blue Note and Lincoln Center. He is a resident artist in Alchemy's HYBRID performance series at Galapagos. Pete often performs as a solo act creating and layering live loops of beatbox, guitar, and vocal textures to build hypnotic songs with the intensity and power of a full band. All sounds are created from Pete's guitar or mouth and looped live; nothing is prerecorded. Pete's new release re:peter is available on cdbaby.com and itunes or through his website.



Alchemy Performance artistic director Sarah Johansson Locke is a resident artist at Galapagos Art Space. She curates and produces HYBRID, a performance series featuring artists who explore new forms and fusions from ancient and contemporary sources. Dancers, musicians, spoken word and circus artists, these performers sample ethnic and electronic elements -- from India to the Balkans, North Africa to Brooklyn -- and remix them into a moving collage across cultures.

Alchemy Dance Theater, musician Pete List, and bodypoet Kazuma Motumura are HYBRID resident artists. Check the events page to see a listing of other artists who've appeared in past shows, as well as news about the Spring 2007 season of HYBRID. For more info on Galapagos visit www.galapagosartspace.com.






Sarah and Alchemy Dance Theater collaborate with artists in all media. Scroll down to find out more about some current projects, and see the links page for information on other Alchemy Performance Collaborators.

Sarah has performed regularly with Akim Funk Buddha in various projects since 2004, at venues including BAMCafe, Joe's Pub, BRIC Studio Theater, and Zebulon. She'll be performing with him at various events in late December. See the events page for details.

Akim Funk Buddha is known for his holistic approach to Hip Hop, drawing from a full spectrum of cultural traditions and artistic disciplines. Rhyming, beat-boxing, mouth and body percussion, story-telling, break-dancing, Mongolian throat-singing, Indonesian monkey chants, body-balancing, martial arts, tap and circus arts are seamlessly blended to create distinctly spiritual yet urban sonic and visual compositions. Akim has performed across the US, internationally, and at NYC venues including Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Culture Project, PS 122, the Blue Note, BAMCafe, the Bronx Museum, and Joe's Pub. He is currently touring with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's production of Blind Date and appearing around NYC with his collective Temporary Autonomus Organism. www.funkbuddha.org

Body Poet Kazuma aka Kazuma Glen Motomura is a resident artist in Alchemy's HYBRID performance series at Galapagos. Kazuma is a movement and spoken word artist with experience in many disciplines, from martial arts to hip hop, modern dance to poetry. He recently came back from Taiwan on a tour with La MaMa's Great Jones Rep. He has performed at the United Nations, MGM Grand Las Vegas, and in Ohio, Tokyo, California, New York, and the subways with various companies: Spinnin Ronin Martial Arts Dance Theater, Akim Funk Buddha, and Juxtapower-South Africa Dance and Song. Kazuma can be reached at bodypoet1@yahoo.com.