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.

A dancer stands with her legs apart, knees bent, arms extended in a flowing curve resembling the letter S. She looks to the right, her hair in motion over her head. She wears torn white cloth, and is smeared with in red-brown makeup.

Our transnational feminist aesthetic is inspired by the energy of the Dakini – the untameable feminist spiritual force – and celebrates emotional and performative maximalism.

  • 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).

  • 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. 

  • … conjure a world in which the transnational feminist 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.

Nine dancers form a cluster, all facing focusing their gaze outward. Their many outstretched arms call to mind a complicated blossom or a sea anemone. The dancers have many different skin tones and are all costumed differently. Purples, greens, reds.