Dance Studies Colloquium Series
Ananya Chatterjea, University of Minnesota
Heat: Contesting Lines in South-South Contemporary Dance
Ananya Chatterjea (2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship, 2012 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, 2016 Joyce Award, 2018 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow; 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow), Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a Twin Cities-based professional dance company of women and femme artists of color, makes “People Powered Dances of Transformation” intersecting contemporary dance-making and social justice choreography. She has toured her work to the Bethlehem International Performing Arts Festival, Palestine (2018), Aavejak Avaaz Festival, Delhi (2018), Crossing Boundaries Festival, Addis Ababa, (2015), Harare International Dance Festival, Zimbabwe (2013), New Waves Institute of Dance and Performance, Trinidad (2012), and other national and international locations. Ananya is the co-convener of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice in St. Paul where dance is a mode of building relationships and community and where women and femme artists of color are centered.
Ananya is Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches courses in Dance Studies and technique. She has presented the keynote talk at the joint conference of Congress of Research in Dance and Society of Dance History Scholars (2016) and was a keynote speaker in the inaugural panel of the Dance/NYC conference (2019). She is currently writing her second book, Heat & Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies, under contract with Palgrave McMillan, re-framing understandings of Contemporary Dance from the perspective of dance-makers from global south locations.