About Ananya

Ananya Chatterjea‘s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a commitment to healing justice. She is the Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a professional ensemble company of Black and brown artists dancing social justice choreography. She is the creator of ADT’s movement signature vocabulary, Yorchhā, and the primary architect of the company’s justice- and community-oriented choreographic methodology, Shawngrām. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow, a 2012 and 2021 McKnight Choreography Fellow, a 2016, Joyce Award recipient, a 2018 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, and the 2021 A. P. Andersen Award. Her work has toured widely to international and national venues. She has recently premiered Michhil Amra/We are the procession, inspired by the Twin Cities Uprising and global protest movements. Ananya is Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches courses in Dance Studies and contemporary practice. Her second book, Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies (2020, Palgrave McMillan), re-framing understandings of Contemporary Dance from the perspective of dance-makers from global south locations, was awarded the 2022 Brockett Book Prize by Dance Studies Association. Her most recent book, an edited anthology, Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice, was published by University of Washington Press in 2022.

Photo credit: Paul Virtucio
Headshot photo credit: Canaan Mattson