Ananya Dance Theatre in India

Professor Ananya Chatterjea and Five Dance Alumni Travel to India
Ananya Dance Theatre Group in India
Ananya Dance Theatre company members and guests at a reception at the Habitat Center.

Ananya Chatterjea, Professor of Dance in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theater Arts & Dance, locates her research and teaching at the intersection of creative and scholarly research. She is the also founder and artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a dance company of women artists of color committed to social justice choreography and to making “people powered dances of transformation.”

Ananya Dance Theatre was invited to festivals in New Delhi and Guwahati, Assam which focused on social justice and solidarity. The practice of "dance-making" is less dominant in Indian traditional dance, where artistic interpretation of established pieces of repertoire is highly valued. This is the "contemporary innovation" in ADT's work, where the stories of women's lives, often inspired by the stories the dancers in the company bring to the table, shape the choreographic arc of the evening-length works. Among the company members that traveled were dance alumni, Renėe Copeland, Alexandra Eady, Kealoha Ferreira, Leila Awadallah, and Emma Marlar (as Production Manager).

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