(first draft) THEMES & RESPONSES

ENVIRONMENTALJUSTICE

BUILDINGCOMMUNITY

INRESPONSE

SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE

WORKWOMEN DO

Our research uncovered little-known, yet vital stories of women, womxn, and femmes from global Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, often from the margins of their societies, laboring in multiple ways to keep their communities moving toward healing and vibrancy. Often, there is no recognition that this work is, in fact, historic. We came to understand that while the scale of this kind of labor might seem small and local, it often bridges the gap between living and giving up. The research for this quintet of dance theater pieces began with conversations from women and femme leaders from local and global Black and brown communities who have taken on extraordinary projects because they felt compelled to act on their beliefs, their commitment to community, and their politics. While their work had been deeply impactful, it had gone largely unnoticed because it was not work that ends in quantifiable results and large-scale policy shifts. The quintet identifies stories about such labor and celebrates it through imagined stories of the journeys of women and femmes who, while they may never have known about each other, labored together in our imagination and choreography. Because we wanted to celebrate labor that generally remains unmarked as “work,” this series also redefines the notion of what constitutes labor. Women, womxn and femmes varied work includes physical, emotional, intellectual, philosophical, and political ways of laboring, that are crucial in sustaining our world.

This theme emerged organically from all of the research we have done about how women, womxn, and femmes from global Black, Indigenous and communities of color resist violence and seek social justice.

neel

roktim

horidraa

shyamali

shaatranga

WORK WOMEN DO

In Response is a multi-year, multi-dance series of artistic rejoinders to urgent issues in BIPOC women and femme communities.

dastak

Nün Gherāo

antaranga

Sutrajāl

michhil amra

IN RESPONSE

NEED COPY

It was important to us not to “domesticate” violence, to see it as discrete incidents for which an individual, someone else, can be blamed. Rather, we wanted to dance about the recurring systemic violence that runs through and rends the shared histories of women, womxn, and femmes from global Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. We investigated this global theme by tracing the history of four naturally occurring elements: land, gold, oil, and water. Each of these has been appropriated, mined, or harnessed as capital in ways that have led, directly or indirectly, to horrific violences. Together, the stories of these four elements tell of capital’s march to commodify natural resources and destroy habitats and sustainable systems of livelihood in the world’s economic systems. The research methodology for the quartet shaped our process in important ways. Due to funding priorities and limited resources, most organizations working with gendered violence focused their work on providing direct services. This was different from our intent to broaden the frame and look at how day-to-day gendered violences and sexual assaults were built into larger systems of social organization. It meant that the artists had to research specific phenomena around violence, bringing their individual perspectives to the creative process and sharpening their identity as “cultural activists.” Our new investigations confirmed what we had learned during the environmental justice trilogy: that some of the most courageous resistances are propelled by communities and leaders who are completely marginalized. Stories about the strategic resistance led by women, womxn, and femmes from global Black, Indigenous and communities of color inspired much of our creativity. The quartet series strengthened our conviction that our dances needed to articulate complex and layered narratives that share as much of the devastation of communities as the little known yet critical responses that come from them. We sought to inspire in our audiences, hope that emerges from sharing a struggle and participating in a diverse community of people. For a majority of the quartet, we collaborated with theater artist and writer Laurie Carlos, whose “jazz aesthetic” influenced our creative process, inspiring us to intersect vocalizations, footwork, and movement. We also juxtaposed stories from different contexts, disrupting possibilities of a linear narrative, and highlighting contrasts and resonances amidst the differences.

moreechika

mohona

The exploration of environmental injustice, the intimate relationship among hierarchies of gender, race, and class, and the historic violences against eco-systems and world communities led us to a second multi-year project: a quartet of works exploring the ways in which Black and brown women, womx, and femmes experience and resist systemic violence.

SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE

kshoy!/decay!

tushaanal

Conversations with Shalini Gupta, a founding company member now fully focused on environmental work, and her colleague, Cecilia Martinez, led us to research and explore particular environmental hazards in our local communities and how these were replicated on a transnationally on a global scale. What began as a one-year thematic focus grew into a sustained exploration, resulting in a trilogy of works on environmental justice and a perspective that continues to inform our work through the present. Dialogues and workshops with researchers, activists, and organizers nurtured the creation of this trilogy. We formed relationships with people and organizations at the forefront of environmental struggles, such as the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, Women’s Environmental Institute, and Environmental Justice Advocates for Minnesota. Even as we were overwhelmed by the disastrous consequences of environmental crises, particularly for impoverished communities of color around the world, we found hope in learning about the work being done at grassroots levels by global marginalized communities to urge sustainable solutions.

ashesh barsha

daak

IN 2006, WE EMBARKED ON OUR FIRST MULTI-YEAR PROJECT, TURNING OUR FOCUS TO A CRITICAL LOOK AT OUR LOCATION IN THE WORLD: GEO-POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE ENVIRONMENT.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

pipaashaa

What does it mean when women and femmes from global Black and brown communities learn about each other’s histories and participate respectfully in each other’s cultural and artistic practices? How do we dismantle instincts of mistrust and self-preservation at the expense of community, ingrained through years of living inside systemic injustice? How do we instead build new histories of collaboration and alliance across and with acknowledgement of our differences?Most importantly, how does dancing together enable us to move these questions? With few models to follow about how to build a dance company based on a political orientation – women and femmes who identified as being from local and global BIPOC communities and committed to critical explorations of community, intersections of gender, race, sexuality, caste, and class, memory, history, and identity – the first two years allowed for reflections about the kind of company and artistic practice we wanted to build.

IN OUR FIRST TWO YEARS, 2004-2006, ANANYA DANCE THEATRE’S ARTISTS FOCUSED ON BUILDING A SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND TRUST AND INVESTIGATING WHY IT WAS SO ESSENTIAL TO DO SO. THE DISCUSSIONS OF THAT PROCESS SHAPED THE FOUNDATION OF THE COMPANY’S WORK AND SET A PARTICULAR TONE FOR ITS CULTURE.

BANDh

duurbaar

BUILDING COMMUNITY

We asked ourselves: What practices must be integral to bridge the divide between professional dance, as defined by the mainstream, and community-building? How can choreography reveal the parallel existence of many narratives? How can we invite activists and organizers to look at our artistic practice as a way of creating change? How can we practice artistic excellence while remaining inclusive in our philosophy?Our conversations enabled us to confront the histories that have divided local and global Black, Indigenous, and communities of color without pressure to arrive at a resolution. Danced images, moving from one vision to the next, became our way of asking questions, letting them breathe in the space and become manifest in the new rhythms we created. Coming to breathe together, even as we journeyed through different routes, became an important metaphor for building alliances across difference.Choreographic principles emerged and became part of our company’s culture as we learned how to build a community that embraces our differences. For example, we celebrate the structural differences of our bodies and identities, and uniform ensemble work sometimes fails to highlight that complexity. We learned how variations on a theme can be articulated with different movements that arrive at the same point, while still respecting our differences. We came to value precision and dancing together without necessarily conforming to dancing sameness. Our first two years of abstract, non-linear choreographic narratives were built through a dialogic and workshop-based creative process that we described as “mining the richness in the dancers.” This inward focus led us to understand the intense and urgent work of building relationships within our communities and laid the foundation for subsequent years.