The Art of Reinvention: Sara Sugihara on Creativity, Dance & Finding Your Way
What happens when your creative career refuses to fit into one box?
In Season 2 of Artists Unveiled, Holiday sits down with Sara Sugihara, a dancer, choreographer, teacher, composer, pianist, translator, and lifelong creative who has spent decades moving between disciplines and countries.
Sara’s career is a reminder that there is no single way to be an artist. Sometimes, finding your path means taking a completely different one when you least expect it.
From Piano to Dance
Sara originally trained as a classical pianist, practicing for hours every day. But after discovering dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts, she knew she wanted to pursue it.
It wasn't exactly an easy start. She was told she wasn't talented enough to return to the school.
Instead of letting that decide her future, Sara went to Sarah Lawrence College and eventually made her way to New York, where she began studying, performing, and teaching.
At just 19, she was asked to teach a dance class.
Then came France, and eventually decades of work across Europe, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, and beyond. She danced, choreographed, taught, composed, and built her own creative practice along the way.
Her career never followed one straight line, and that's exactly what makes it so interesting.
One Art Form Can Influence Another
One of the biggest realizations Sara had was that music and dance weren't separate at all.
After years of thinking of them as two different disciplines, she suddenly recognized the connection: the discipline, timing, musicality, and rigor she had developed as a pianist were already shaping the way she danced.
That realization changed how she worked.
She began composing music for her choreography, incorporating different musical styles into her teaching, and thinking about movement through the same structures she understood through music.
For Sara, the arts are ultimately one language.
And that idea extends beyond music and dance. Her work in translation, teaching, choreography, and composition all feed into each other.
Reinvention Is Part of Being an Artist
Eventually, Sara's body began telling her that it was time to move away from dancing at the level she once had.
But she didn't see that as the end of her creative career.
She took the skills she had developed through decades in the arts and applied them elsewhere, working as a translator and interpreter for dance and theatre companies in France.
At one point, she was working with dozens of companies.
Her approach to reinvention is simple: take what you already know and find somewhere new to use it.
A career change doesn't have to mean starting over.
“If I Can't Explain It, You Can't Either”
Sara's philosophy around teaching is one of the most memorable parts of the episode.
After years of being taught movements without understanding how or why they worked, she decided to teach differently.
She breaks movements down anatomically, musically, and technically. If she can't explain something clearly, she doesn't expect her students to simply copy it.
That philosophy came from her own frustration as a student—and became one of the foundations of her teaching career.
She also learned another important lesson early on: never stop encouraging.
Her students once told her that while she was a good teacher, she was too negative. She took their criticism seriously and changed the way she taught, choosing to encourage rather than simply point out what was wrong.
Keep Moving
Throughout the conversation, Sara returns to the same idea: don't narrow yourself.
Try another medium. Learn another skill. Collaborate with people who work differently from you. Stay curious.
You might be a dancer who discovers composing. A musician who finds movement. An artist who becomes a teacher. Or a creative who finds an entirely new career later in life.
None of those things have to cancel each other out.
Sara's story shows that sometimes the strongest creative practice is the one that keeps evolving.
Artists Unveiled: Season 2 is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Buzzsprout.
