Elsewhere Otherwise - Sadie Leigh & Kristen Yeung

Hi, we're Kristen and Sadie - dance artists, creative collaborators, and longtime friends. We've been working on our dance theatre show, Elsewhere/Otherwise for the past several months, and now we're getting ready to share it with audiences in DC, Baltimore, Portland, and Seattle.

About the work

Elsewhere/Otherwise is a dance theatre performance, featuring original choreography and sound co-created by Kristen Yeung and Sadie Leigh. This work is a vehicle and a vessel for processing the deeply personal and universally shared experience of moving from one place to another.

Kristen moved to Seattle in August 2020 from Baltimore, MD and Sadie arrived in Portland in June 2022 from Washington, DC. We both left behind our families, a beloved community of friends and artists, and the only homes we'd ever known. Our bittersweet relocations propelled us toward the challenge and excitement of newness, and toward romance and partnership with people who wanted to be out west. Though our stories are not identical, the overlap is potent.

There will be four performances of Elsewhere/Otherwise - for one night only in both our old homes and new - serving as a bridge connecting our east coast roots to our west coast bloom. We invite viewers to join us, asking east coast audiences to see us off and west coast audiences to welcome us in.

Performance details

Click here for tickets!

Washington, DC - Friday, May 12

The Fillmore - Georgetown

1801 34th St NW

Baltimore, MD - Saturday, May 13

Church on the Square

1025 S Potomac St

Portland, OR - Saturday, June 3

Performance Works NorthWest

4625 SE 67th Ave

Seattle, WA - Saturday, June 10open

Open Flight Studio

4205 University Way NE

Why we're crowdfunding

Each of us is committed to investing in our new cities and growing where we’ve chosen to plant ourselves. And simultaneously, we each feel a deep connection to the homes we've left behind. Elsewhere/Otherwise serves as both an introduction to the Portland and Seattle arts/dance communities, and a homecoming celebration in DC and Baltimore.

However, self-producing a dance show is not cheap. We've rented rehearsal space, taken monthly Amtrak trips between Seattle and Portland for intensive weekends of rehearsal, booked performance venues, and... those cross-continental flights are pricey. At this point, we've been covering all the costs just the two of us, but community has always been an essential part of our art-making, and we wanted to reach out for any support you might be able and excited to offer.

Where the $$$ goes

$25 - covers a meal during one of our weekend intensives

$60 - covers a round-trip train ticket between Seattle and Portland (this process requires 9 of these!)

$80 - covers a weekend’s worth of rehearsal space

$100 - subsidizes rental of a performance venue

$200 and up is an incredible help in subsidizing promotional materials, a stipend for a professional photographer to document the performances, airfare for our May shows on the east coast, and so much more

Rewards for your support

About the artists

Kristen Yeung is a designer, dancer, and maker – of things like birthday cards, dances, ad campaigns, and fried rice. She received a BA Cum Laude in Studio Art & Graphic Design from the University of Maryland, and brings a designer’s eye and an artist’s spirit to her choreography. Her dances explore themes of identity, relationship, and the unexpected, often bringing in playful set design and props. She is a company member of Heart Stück Bernie (Washington, DC) and former company member of The Collective (Baltimore, MD). With collaborator Lynne Price, she received the 2017 Alumni Dance Commission for NextNOW Fest at UMD, and their work “If you’d rather leave” was selected for the 2017 Baltimore Dance Invitational.

Sadie Leigh values community, collaboration, and celebration. As a lifelong lover, performer, and maker of dance and music, she believes in the inherent spirituality of a dedicated artistic practice. She derives her work from source materials ranging from pedestrian gestures to disappointing text messages to fever dreams and happy accidents. Whether in a gallery, a brewery, a black box, the Kennedy Center, or your living room, she brings purposeful playfulness and compassionate curiosity into her artistic endeavors.

In 2022, Sadie relocated from Washington, DC to Portland, OR in the name of adventure and romance. Though far from her hometown, she remains connected to the arts community there as a company member with Heart Stück Bernie, one third of the performance collective Area Woman, a collaborator with Extreme Lengths Productions, and a long time company member with Pointless Theatre Company.