Sugar Vendil is an award-winning Filipinx-American composer, pianist, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist. She lives in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn and grew up in the East Bay. Vendil’s practice encompasses acoustic and electronic music and performance that interweaves sound and movement. A former volleyball player who loves to dance, her work is deeply rooted in her sense of physicality and love of improvisation.
Her childhood memoir piece Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia (NEFA NTP Finalist) will premiere in 2026 with her ensemble, isogram. Her work Simple Tasks 2 is on Jennifer Koh’s GRAMMY-award winning album Alone Together. Film scores include Jih-E Peng’s May We Know Our Own Strength and GATHER, short films based on Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s installations. She danced in Emily Johnson/Catalyst’s Being Future Being and Adrienne Westwood’s [ ], and is co-composer with treya lam in Marie Lloyd Paspe’s Stone Belly. Her album, May We Know Our Own Strength is out on Gold Bolus Recordings. She is working on an opera inspired by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's DICTEE and a maximalist interdisciplinary work, COMING OF RAGE, that utilizes rage as a source of healing and potential instigator of joy.
At MacDowell, Vendil composed and choreographed portions of her new work, MONSTERHOOD, and engaged in research for a opera inspired by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s “DICTEE.”
