James Coleman
About Sarah
Sarah Maria Samaniego is a dancer, choreographer and teacher-in-dance.
Sarah began taking ballet lessons with Cherry Velarde-Mactal and her associate ballet teacher Liz Palaganas at the Cherry T. Velarde Dance Academy in Baguio City. She was later enrolled in Ballet Manila’s Summer Dance Workshop in 1999 and 2000. Realizing that she was indeed increasing in her passion to dance, her family decided to move to Manila in 2001 to enable Sarah to pursue her classical ballet dance training full time with Ballet Manila while being homeschooled. In 2003, Ballet Manila granted Sarah a full scholarship and the following year was promoted to Company Scholar. From 2001 to 2008, she has performed in all of Ballet Manila’s full-length productions, The Nutcracker (Masha, Pas de Trois), Swan Lake(Cygnet), Carmen, Don Quixote, La Fille Mal Gardee, Pinnochio, Giselle, La Bayadere, Romeo and Juliet, Le Corsaire and divertissements, Tony Fabella’s Dancing to Verdi and Dalagang Pilipina and Jojo Lucila’s Sari’t Bahag. When Ballet Manila represented the Philippines at the 2004 Aberdeen International Youth Festival in Scotland, Sarah was one of the youngest participants. She was mentored by the “Ballerina of the People” Lisa-Macuja-Elizalde, Osias Barroso, Russian Ballet Master Victor Savaliev, Jeffrey Espejo, Pamela Asprer-Espejo, Elline Damian, Eileen Lopez, as well as the eminent Russian teacher Tatiana Udalenkova of the Academy of Russian Ballet, and choreographer and People’s artist of Russia Sergei Vikulov. A graduate of the University of the Philippines Diliman with a Bachelor in Music major in Dance (cum laude). A senior member of the UP Dance Company, she has essayed vast major roles of the company's repertoire in the Philippines and abroad. She is a prize winner of the 2012 Wifi Body Dance Festival New Choreographers Competition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines with her work "Nalaruan" (In Playing) and premiered it at the 2013 Yokohama Dance Competition X Dance Showcase. In 2014, she attended the Southeast Asian Choreolab hosted by Rimbun Dahan Space organized by the World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She looks forward in 2019 as being invited as visiting artist of the Tangente Danse's 2018-2019 Season, in Montreal, Canada. |