A Talented Duo: Cleo Reed and Symara Sarai at the Abrons Arts Center

Since 1980, the Abrons Arts Center located in the Lower East Side has provided burgeoning early-career artists with funding, resources, and opportunities to professionally develop their craft through their AIRspace residency programs. Dozens of dancers and musicians like Cleo Reed and Symara Sarai have graduated from the AIRspace Performance Residency with the goal of sharing their art with a wider audience. As a part of the residency program, they have each produced and shared their works in progress productions with the public throughout 2025. 

Cleo Reed, 26, said that the program has allowed them to make a living as a full-time artist. Reed is a multidisciplinary artist hailing from Washington Heights and a musician. In 2021, they started to produce performance art pieces with their original music. “I feel really seen by Abrons. It’s really easy to generate ideas with them and the community,” said Reed.

Reed’s performance style cannot be described through typical ballet, hip-hop, or contemporary influences, but a personification and full embodiment of each character plays in their performance. As a part of the residency program, Reed puts on a solo show titled cuntry:wip that addresses labor both in the body and the workplace with their own music as the score.

“I’m enjoying the process of just making things,” said Reed. “ Being able to wake and think about [my art] every day feels like the blessing I didn’t even know that I needed. I have a lot of momentum inside of me.”

Symara Sarai, 30, says that being a part of residency has been a long-time goal of hers. Sarai, a Portland Oregon native, currently resides in Brooklyn. Since the age of 10, Sarai has been dancing and performing on stages from New York to Beijing. With a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase, she works as a choreographer and artist. “It’s been incredible. The team is amazing and extremely supportive. I feel like they make a lot of space for artists to be authentically themselves.”

Conceived and choreographed by Sarai, Angelic Architectures brings together three dancers—including herself—in a collaborative experiment that showcases the inner anarchy of Black queer femininity blown out across the stage space. This experiment is one of the first of Sarai’s career, as she mostly performed as a solo artist prior to the residency. “I consider myself to be an improvisational artist. I work a lot with spontaneous performance,” said Sarai. What is seen as a challenge to some, spontaneity is what she calls a “radical push-up.” 

“I use [Improvisation] as a tool and structure,” she notes. 

While being a resident of the Abrons Arts Center is an achievement of its own, Sarai hopes that she can turn the performance into a tour, bringing the experiment to a global stage.

For Reed, continuing to produce their own music is probably likely on the horizon. “I feel like life’s a circle,” they laughed. “I’m just going to make more projects. That’s about it.”

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