Artists Reach Out: Ananya Chatterjea

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Ananya Chatterjea

Ananya Chatterjea
(photo courtesy of Ananya Dance Theatre;
by Laichee Yang)

Ananya Chatterjea in Mohona (2013)
(photo courtesy of Ananya Dance Theatre,
by Paul Virtucio)

Ananya Chatterjea’s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a philosophy of #occupydance. She is artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a Twin Cities-based professional dance company of women and femme artists of color, and co-founder of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice. Her “people-powered dances of transformation” proceed through concert performances and participatory performances in non-traditional spaces where audiences become co-creators of movement explorations.

Ananya received a 2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship, 2012 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, 2015 Sage Outstanding Dance Educator Award, 2016 Joyce Foundation Award, 2018 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellowship, and a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellowship. Her work has been recognized for its delivery of “political theater” with seldom-matched “level of commitment and charisma” (City Pages, 9/18/19). Chatterjea is currently creating Dastak, a dance-theater work exploring borders, boundaries, home and belonging, with the support of an NPN Creation Fund, NDP Production Award, and a two-part MANCC Residency.

Ananya Chatterjea in Trikone,opening performance at Ocean Dance Festival,
Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh
(photo: ©Asif Muhammed Musaddeque, 2019)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I was creating a new work about borders, home, and belonging, an ambitious, interdisciplinary project. The creative process, where we were joined by the fabulous Sharon Bridgforth (dramaturg) and guest artist Spirit McIntyre, was roaring along. This rich collaborative time was abruptly halted by the virus. The premiere was originally scheduled for September 2020, and we had a great touring circuit set up. All of that now hangs at the mercy of this virus’ wrath.

There are other projects, one in collaboration with the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts for instance, that I was looking forward to (April-May). Now, I have no idea what will happen to these. We have been able to keep our artists on salary as was scheduled from April, but if the work does not premiere in September, I do not know what we will do. Also, my work thrives on energetic connection with the audience, and builds in engagement with audiences, so the idea of sharing the work via live streaming is difficult.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

My mother, who grew up through the anti-colonial struggles in India and could not fulfill her dream to learn dance, introduced me to the art. As I grew up, I fell in love with dance, and had the opportunity to study with some amazing gurus. Yet, all around me were the women’s movement, movements demanding caste/class justice, and political street theater critiquing state violences. They pulled me away from my training in classical and folk dance forms and pushed me into an investigation of what social justice choreography might be.

Reflecting on my practice today, I can say that my commitment to social justice taught me choreographic finesse and pushed me to create a feminist, contemporary dance vocabulary from my training in Odissi, Mayurbhanj Chhau, and Vinyasa yoga. Today, my practice is moved by the brilliant ways in which Black and brown women and femmes forge liberation and joy.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

At this time, more than ever, I am practicing dance as lifeforce and as articulation of spirit. I am trying to prepare my body externally (through different kinds of physical training) and internally (through spiritual work) to be strong and in community, so dance can resist the new waves of capitalist co-optation that are following this pandemic.

I am acknowledging that the ensemble practice of rhythmic cycles cannot be adequately supported by Zoom transmissions: the time lag disappoints our hearts repeatedly. So when we prepare to build this devastated field back up again, what will we make sure to attend to?

I am paying attention to how the pandemic has intensified existing injustices. I am witnessing images of energetic engagement--nurses standing still in the midst of angry protesters in Colorado, of a 12-year-old girl walking 150 km to get home only to die of exhaustion in Chhattisgarh--and reflecting deeply on transformation. I am asking myself, how will I dance differently now?

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I care about dance for life’s sake, for the crossing of power and poetry, and to share rhythm, space, and vision, with my comrades. I am even more convinced that dancing that works through energetic connections, fine rhythmic intersections, and communications from the tips of our fingers and our eyes, will always be failed by neat rectangular boxes of visuality.

So, if there are limited or no occasions to share dancing with live audiences until 2022, how can I ready myself for that moment? What stories, what dark recesses and failures, what journeys towards light, can we uphold with utmost care at that time? Living through this pandemic and re-understanding the privileges of water, soap, Internet, space, is helping me chisel my choreographic craft and consider carefully the labor of carving and nurturing space of dancing stories that will be urgent at that re-convening.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

There is dancing that flows through huge amounts of space. There is dancing that roots down and works details in groundedness. Might there be equity in taking up just the amount of space that is necessary to articulate an idea? Might there be lessons of generosity and equity in refusing to participate in the games of social media popularity?

The stillness and attention to detail we practice now will deepen our resilience for the time when we, dancers, will become part of the “essential workers” team and are needed to sprout hope and advocate for justice in our communities.

The work that I was creating has already taken on several more dimensions through this time. I can only do them justice if I remain quiet right now, listening and expanding my capacity to dance them simultaneously and intersectionally.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

Gratitude is a practice.

There are lessons in the abundance of sunlight.

If I shift the focus of footwork practice to engaging the pelvic floor deeply, then I chisel one skill AND protect my knees instead of not practicing footwork due to an unsuitable floor.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Dance and Social Justice: UBW, Ananya Dance Theatre and me

Hair and Other Stories

Urban Bush Women

BRIC

January 31-February 9

Here's one of those productions that people are going to be talking about for a very, very long time. But when I talk about Hair and Other Stories it, I don't even know how to label it, because it's not a dance show. It's a spectacle, a marketplace, a cultural archive, a community chat about race, a hot dance party, a chance to get your hair trimmed by a really smooth barber and, I guess, anything that you--as an engaged audience member--are willing to get yourselves into. You are an essential part of it. All of this unfolds at BRIC, where Urban Bush Women has been enjoying a residency, and hooray for BRIC for this exciting curation. I danced some (to the irresistible DJ-ing of The Illustrious Blacks), and I also sat in rapt admiration as members of Urban Bush Women threw down some of the most vibrant, urgent and gorgeous performing I've seen from them or from anyone in a very long time. Performing to meet the needs of our times--direct, uncompromising, utilizing the far reaches of their physical and expressive energies, and presenting issues of race and culture inside a multilayered, multifaceted context that emphasizes the expansive richness of what it means to be Black. Choreographed by Chanon Judson (whose intense performance seared me) and Samantha Speis in collaboration with UBW. Bessie nominations to the team on this one, please. Hair and Other Stories INFO/TICKETS

Urban Bush Women in
Hair and Other Stories

Ananya Dance Theatre in
Shaatranga: Women Weaving Worlds
(photo: Randy Karels)

Symposium on Dance & Social Justice

Dance Department, Mason Gross School of the Arts

Rutgers University

February 1

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening on the Rutgers campus, the guest of dance artist Ananya Chatterjea of Ananya Dance Theatre, who is wrapping up a residency at Rutgers's Mason Gross School of the Arts, and cared for graciously by Dance Department Chair and Artistic Director, Julia Ritter, Ph.D and MFA in Dance Director, Jeff Friedman, Ph.D. Chatterjea had invited me to join her panel on dance and social justice* which included Hui Nui Wilcox, Ph.D, educator and Ananya company member; Zaneta Rago-Craft, Director at Rutgers's Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities; and Lela Aisha Jones, dance artist and Founding Director of Lela Aisha Jones│FlyGround.

Afterwards, I enjoyed a soul-warming dinner and conversation with some fun table-mates--among them, Jones and Donia Salem (Executive Director, The Outlet Dance Project). Then we all took in ADT's Shaatranga: Women Weaving Worlds (which concludes at Rutgers's Loree Dance Theatre this evening). Chatterjea's vision for her all-women ensemble blends contemporary with classical Indian movement, serene visual design and formal choreography with a confident infusion of the rebellious personal and political spirit she first observed in the theatrical street demonstrations led by Indian women and trans femme activists. Learn more about ADT's residency here.

⚫⚫⚫

*My opening remarks from the day's panel

The arts have always been my refuge--from a sometimes difficult home; from an often difficult society. Up until recently, I was able to say out loud how much I counted my blessings to have work that would always surround me with artists.

That was true for my work as a dance writer and certainly even more true now for my work as a curator for a major dance center.

Artists were my bulwark, my grounding force, my heat shield. But is that what artists are for?

Not today.

I have an old friend out on the West Coast, a former New Yorker, who is Black and indigenous and queer, a poet and visual artist. One day when I was complaining to her on Facebook Messenger about the general run of things in Grump’s America, she reached into that multifaceted basket of hard experience and wisdom to remind me that it’s actually an honor to be alive now in this challenging time.

And I flashed back to what the poet June Jordan wrote, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” It truly says something fierce about us--and about some committed vow that we must have made before being born--that we are right here and right now with our eyes open and our skills sharpened. Ready to rumble.

As children are torn from their parents at the southern border or mis-educated in their schools or shot to death in those same schoolrooms, artists are not, for me or for any of us, just something to lean upon or hide behind or be distracted by.

Artists are knights, armored up and charging forward into the worst of things. Because how can they not?

Their capacity to honestly witness, process, analyze, dream up, brainstorm and collaborate and build with others are what we need now, because we are coming up out of a deep and deeply-troubled sleep, roused by multiple monsters of oppression.

And what of our artists?  If they are not, themselves, prone to the American way of denying, hiding, numbing the self or following addictive distractions down all sorts of sinkholes, our artists are doing their work despite the fact that they themselves might be on the verge of nausea, or they somehow manage to keep going with only that one. last. good. nerve.

A dance artist I once interviewed noted how much Black/lesbian/poet/warrior/mother Audre Lorde influenced him. He remembered that she would always ask, pointedly, “Are you doing your work?”

Most of the artists I know and respect are doing just that--their work--with more focus and determination than ever before. Which does not make it nice and easy for the rest of us. It provides no hiding place. One of the dancers of Urban Bush Women said it best last night at the premiere of Hair and Other Stories: “Safe space is not comfortable space.”

The windstorm kicked up by those knights artistic as they charge past us cannot be ignored. We are caught up in it, too, swept along to the battleground.

As my West Coast friend would say, There are no mistakes. We are meant to be here. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Let’s do our work.

-- Eva Yaa Asantewaa


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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Apply now for Dance & Performance Summer Institute!

Makeda Thomas's Roots & Wings Movement! Dance & Performance Institute is accepting applications now for 2012 Artist Residencies.

The Dance & Performance SUMMER Institute - New Waves! (July 18-August 2, 2012) will bring 50 international dance artists to Trinidad. The two-week Summer Institute offers intensive master classes and workshops in contemporary dance, Caribbean dance, hip-hop, composition and repertory with an outstanding faculty of international dance artists.

Through informal dialogues and Institute programs, participants create community, build connections with other dance professionals, and experience the unique cultural landscape of Trinidad & Tobago. Classes and workshops are held, primarily, at the University of Trinidad & Tobago, Academy for the Performing Arts, held within the National Academy of the Performing Arts in the heart of the nation's capital, Port of Spain.

FACULTY INCLUDE: Makeda Thomas, Chris Walker, Ananya Chatterjea, Dyane Harvey-Salaam, Rennie Harris, Sonja Dumas, Ras Mikey C, and Delton Frank.

Professional dance artists/scholars may apply through October 1, 2011. So, hurry! Click here.

About Makeda Thomas