HALA Saori

Profile

Born in Tokyo in 1988. Lives and works in Tokyo. Graduated with an MA from University of Art Berlin in 2018. After nearly a decade in Berlin, she has been based in Tokyo since 2023, presenting her work both in Japan and internationally. Dance artist. Using her own body as material, she creates performance works that traverse the fields of visual art, fashion, and technology. Focusing on the intersections between individual and societal histories of the body, her work responds to choreographic phenomena embedded in space and social structures.

Recent activities:
2025 “Play Modular,” Co-production with Setagaya Public Theatre, Theatre Tram, Tokyo
2024 “P wave,” Independent production, Goethe-Institut Tokyo, Tokyo
2024 “post Ghost,” Performing Arts Selection 2024, KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Yokohama
2023 “Earth as a Circuit,” MEET YOUR ART FESTIVAL 2024, Warehouse TERADA G1, Tokyo
2023 “Da Dad Dada,” HOTPOT Hong Kong, Free Space, Hong Kong 

Recent awards:
2025 Artist Fellow of Saison Foundation
2019 The 9th El Sur Foundation Rookie Award for Contemporary Dance
2018 Overseas Research Fellowship, The POLA Foundation for the Promotion of Arts and Culture
2012 Overseas Research Fellowship, Yoshino Gypsum Foundation for the Promotion of Art 

About works / performance

With a background in design theory and ecological psychology, Hala explores the body as a perceptual apparatus through performance works that traverse multiple media, including video, sound, text, and drawing. Her practice intervenes in the processes by which sensation and memory are organized, critically reexamining the boundaries between self and other, perception and memory, reality and fiction through embodied actions and performative modes of presentation. In recent years, she has been engaged in reconsidering perceptual experiences that arise in specific spaces and circumstances—such as those shaped by natural disasters—through a choreographic lens.