Photo of Nicole Olson and Karola Luettringhaus from SARUS Festival 2025 by Emily Raynor

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
WE ARE OPEN FOR PROPOSALS YEAR ROUND! 
Submit a proposal: APPLICATION FORM 2027 
We look forward to hearing from you. Anybody who would like to contribute to our community through artistic modes of thought and action can apply to participate, exhibit, perform, engage, exchange, create experiences, or otherwise become part of our festival program. 
CALL FOR SPONSORS: 
We, together, create SARUS Festival; some participate by performing, or teaching, volunteering, making sure technical elements run smoothly, and some support the events and people financially. Let*s carry SARUS together. Supporting the arts is investing in our socio-political conviviality, our education, and individual as well as collective wellbeing. 
SARUS Festival is Tenderness towards the visceral vulnerability of our experiences, the mutual
gift of attending, and the sometimes painful responsibility to call us into awareness.
Nicole Olson, Maurice Moore (with their creative costume and concept art featuring light mask), and Brinson Leigh Kresge in SOUND BODIES - COIL, August 8th, 2025 at CFCC. photo by .......

SARUS Festival is Process: SARUS represents an opportunity to come together as a community to experience the visceral beauty and complexity of performing art and performance-making, to work things out, to question assumptions, to witness and explore creativity, to express ourselves, to nourish community-wide empathy and communication, to challenge ourselves to open our minds, to play and create more happiness, and to support critical, embodied thinking.  
Sarus Artist retreat 2025 rehearsal, clockwise from the right: Matthew Williams (Baltimore, MD), Brinson Leigh Kresge (Wilmington, NC), Maurice Moore, Ph.D. (Knoxville, TN),
Phil Zampino, Carl Kruger, Sean Hart (Slow Ear Ensemble, Wilmington, NC)
Photo by Karola Luttringhaus

SARUS Festival is Integrity
SARUS Festival presents exciting, non-commercial, professional, intellectually stimulating performance events and outreach in the greater Wilmington, NC area. The festival brings national and international established and emerging artists to inspire and become inspired, to share and collaborate, teach, and perform.

SARUS Festival creates platforms for presentation and exchange for a broad range of artistic expressions, from dance and theatre, to visual art, installation, film, lecture demonstrations, talks, workshops, youth programs, social events, parties, and more. Typically we present about 40 performing groups that will involve a total of about 70 participating artists in 4-10 locations.

The SARUS Festival is the heart-piece of our organization's work in New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick Counties.

  • Definition of 'Site-specific': Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place, in symbiosis with a location, and emerging as a reaction to our world. The space is the starting point for a creative process that challenges artists to analyze and dissect topographies, history and culture of a region, building or landscape.
  • Definitions of 'Experimental': experimental means relating to or having the characteristics of an experiment, not knowing the outcome, or using methodologies that are uncommon or foreign to a particular task, pushing against boundaries or definitions, or else an approach that is characterized by a hybrid of disparate styles, or unorthodox, new, distinctly unique ingredients.


Sarus Festival crane "Volo" flying in 2015, photo by Harry Schnitzler
CREATIVITY. EXPLORATION. RISK.
MISSION STATEMENT 

The SARUS Festival's mission is to present high caliber international and regional professional art experiences for diverse audiences, to offer inspirational art education, and art opportunities that build community.

The festival wishes to increase professional opportunities for local artists and encourage collaboration among locals and guests, offering unusual performance venues and projects to emerging and established artists for exploration and performance. 

The SARUS Festival is interested in social-critical works and in bringing about positive social change, to help all people enjoy equality and freedom.

The SARUS Festival encourages artists to look at the land, the city, the space that we inhabit and to channel original works from this observation.

The SARUS Festival wants to bridge economic and cultural differences by offering a substantial portion of the programs on a sliding scale fee or for free. We have number of compliemtary tickets for those that can not afford regular ticket prices. Nobody will be turned away for lack of funds. We also hope that some people, who are financially secure, feel called to donate to the festival to make it possible for us to offer these free tickets.

The SARUS Festival creates meeting places for communication, exchange and discussion to reflect on the works presented and their meaning to our every day lives and our cultural and social identity.

SARUS Festival wishes to foster conversations, connections and community.

 
                             9th
for Site-specific & Experimental Art