AESTHETIC
Ananya Dance Theatre’s
ensemble of dance professionals
& cultural activists
collectively embody our
innovative contemporary
transnational feminist aesthetic
to realize Black and brown liberatory story-arcs.
We chisel our aesthetic
with granular attention, upholding multiple, layered,
intersecting stories
of our communities and of those we hold sacred,
through the articulation of our spines
and the energetic impulses
of our limbic extremities.
Our transnational feminist aesthetic is inspired by the energy of the Dakini – the untameable feminist spiritual force – and celebrates emotional and performative maximalism.
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Dakini is traditionally depicted as forces of destruction and chaos that ultimately birth transformation. Dakini provokes the possibility of audiences’ and performers’ discomfort and insists that women’s rage and spiritual ecstasy play a visible role in the arc towards equity. This energy propels us into the breath cycles and extended movement phrases that incarnate the energy of the gentle warrior.
Our artistry unfolds through Yorchhā, our devised contemporary feminist dance form, and our choreographic practice, Shawngrām (“resistance” in Chatterjea’s native Bangla).
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Yorchhā claims the descriptor “innovative” as it celebrates its creation from a deconstruction and reassembly of traditional Odissi, Vinyasa Yoga, and martial art Chhau. While Yorchhā is rooted in principles from these South Asian movement forms, we shape its expression to move beyond an affiliation with “Indian culture” that offers constrictive understandings of Hindu identity. Yorchhā embodies our response to (1) Western/Euro-American movement practices/assumptions that dominate contemporary dance (while ignoring the cultural specificity behind notions of “innovation” and “excellence”) and (2) pressures on BIPOC/global artists to create scrupulous exhibitions of “traditional” forms.
The Shawngrām methodology of dance-making collages devised story-fragments to respond to current global crises and create an arc of hope towards liberation and our shared humanity.
In practice, Yorchhā, and Shawngrām intersect in an intricate counterpoint of detailed choreography, music, sound, and text; structured improvisation; and audience engagement.
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… conjure a world in which the transnational BIPOC women/femme artists of Ananya Dance Theatre are located in places of cultural specificity, while simultaneously released from narrow identity politics. We shine our lights on each other, reveling in the liberation of mutual beholding. Browse our dances.