Amanda Sachs & Elena Hollenhorst

Amanda (she/her) and Elena (she/her) began collaborating in 2021. They are dedicated to sharing their passion for movement through dynamic contemporary dance performances. Amanda and Elena draw inspiration from nature, paintings, literature, and music.

Meet the Artists

The New Jersey native trained in San Francisco with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program. In 2014, Sachs joined The Francesca Harper Project in NYC, and in 2017 joined TU Dance in Minneapolis, where she performed Alvin Ailey’s solo Witness and Night Creature, Walking with Pearl: Africa Diaries by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and numerous other works. She is an original member of Come Through, produced by Liquid Music in collaboration with Grammy-winning musician Bon Iver and TU Dance ,which toured extensively. Sachs joined NW Dance Project in Portland in 2021, where she performed works by Ihsan Rustem, Yin Yue, Joseph Hernandez, Sarah Slipper, and Luca Veggetti. She is featured in Bon Iver’s Naeem and We lyric videos, and has performed at the Bonnaroo and Eaux Claires music festivals. Sachs has performed in the Twin Cities with Honeyworks and Hatch Dance for their Live @ The Shed series. She was selected to create and perform her solo Still at The Cowles Center as part of their 6FEET/6SOLOS show during the global pandemic. Sachs premiered in Ashwini Ramaswamy's Invisible Cities as well as Cold Air Rises by Ben Frost as part of The Great Northern Festival in Minnesota. She made her opera debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago this Spring in Carmen and will be performing original works by Helen Simineau and Stephanie Martinez for PARA.MAR’s Spring Series in Chicago.

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Elena Hollenhorst received her BFA in Dance from the University of MN, Twin Cities and trained at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance where she performed works by Ohad Naharin, Bill T. Jones, Crystal Pite, Jawole Will Jo Zollar, Noa Wertheim, Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak, and Marciano Silva dos Santos. In 2013, Elena joined Black Label Movement, performing works and excerpts of pieces such as Canary and Wreck on Channel 2 TPT TV Takeover and was an original cast member of Whack-a-Mole. In 2015, she joined Jerusalem Dance Theater where she worked with renowned choreographers such as Eyal Dadon, Neta Pulvemacher, Lior Lev, and Liat Tamar Waysbort and performed Untitled by Francesca Harper. More than seven years working with John Mark Creative, Elena performed in venues such as First Avenue, The Target Center, The Lab Theater, The Walker Art Center, and the Eaux Claires Festival. In 2017, Elena performed with multi-hyphenate artist, Vie Boheme in the New Griots Festival at the Walker Art Center. Under the artistic direction of Berit Ahglren, Elena has performed extensively around the Twin Cities with HoneyWorks, including CandyBox, The Southern Theater, and collaborative performances with Hatch Dance, Live @ the Shed’s BoleroBolero and Au. In 2022, Elena premiered Essential, by Randy Reyes, Nathan Keepers, and Berit Ahglren. Most recently, Elena premiered in Ashwini Ramaswamy and Kevork Mourad’s Invisible Cities as part of Minnesota’s Great Northern Festival 2023.
In 2019, Elena was invited to study Gaga intensively alongside Batsheva Dance Company at the invitation of Ohad Naharin as part of the Gaga Teacher Training Program.
Elena has choreographed and produced multiple original projects, both independently and collaboratively with collaborators such as Berit Ahlgren, Dana Hafouta, Pilar Poeschl, and Alexandra Zaslav. She has presented work at The Tek Box, The Southern Theater, Bryant-Lake Bowl’s 9x22, Givat Haviva Peace Campus, MN Opera’s Bemis Hall, the Jerusalem Art Festival, and Live @ the Shed. She choreographed Romeo and Juliet and A Tale of Two Cities for the Twin Cities-based Theater company, CB Productions.