Community Engagement

Alessandra Williams and Yuichiro Onishi explore the world of Ananya Dance Theatre. Williams shares the rich details of the techniques of Ananya Dance Theatre’s specific dance form called Yorchhā, especially how it enacts the multiplicity of dancers’ strong physical presence, bodies, movements, and lived experiences to transform the very genre of contemporary dance. She talks about her own process of transformation in this very specific milieu and artists’ collective, moving through Black feminism and women of color feminism to transnational feminism. The conversation also introduces a specific case of collaboration between Laurie Carlos, a versatile Black woman artist, and Artistic Director Ananya Chatterjea to delineate Afro-Asian aesthetic authority.