Sasha Portyannikova

Sasha Portyannikovais a white, abled dance artist born in the Soviet Union, raised in Moscow. Having lived and worked in Berlin and New York, she is currently based in Innsbruck. She graduated from the Vaganova Ballet Academy (MA, 2013), co-founded the dance cooperative Isadorino Gore with Dasha Plokhova in 2012, became a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2018, and since 2020 she curates the program Touching Margins with Nitsan Margaliot and Anna Chwialkowska. As a dance artist, she has worked in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA; she has cooperated with Amnesty International, ZKM, ITI Berlin, SDVIG, Hellerau, TQW, and Garage MCA, where she created the opening for the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. Together with Daria Plokhova, she authored the Manual for the Practical Use of a Dance Archive. Her research and curatorial interests lay in the diversity of dance histories and entanglements of cultures and politics. Being on the intersection of white privilege and with a lack of interest toward its cultural specificity among Western curators, Sasha is interested in decolonial practices in the post-Soviet realm and their difference from the dominant agenda.