Ananya Dance Theatre

Dastak: I Wish You Me

Mon | November 7 | 7:30PM
Schaeffer Theatre

$5 or $25 tickets on sale now!

Bates College Students tickets are free, but you must reserve here and bring your ID to the performance.

Dastak is a meditation on borders, loss, belonging, home, and liberation. Structured through four elemental journeys, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, the work traces the knockings (dastak, in Farsi) of global injustices on our hearts, and echoes the subtitle created by writer Sharon Bridgforth – I Wish You Me – indicating the cross-generational love that has carried communities through difficult migrations. Dastak invites viewers to imagine what freedom is possible as it expands the realms of intention and trans-dimensional connection through spells that invoke rest, forgiveness, love, and freedom.

Ananya Chatterjea/ অনন্যা চট্টোপাধ্যায় ‘s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a commitment to healing justice. She is the creator of Yorchhā, ADT’s signature movement vocabulary, and is the primary architect of Shawngrām, the company’s justice- and community-oriented choreographic methodology. 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 recipient of the 2021 A. P. Andersen Award. Her work has toured to international venues such as the Bethlehem International Performing Arts Festival, Palestine (2018), Crossing Boundaries Festival, Ethiopia, (2015), Harare International Dance Festival, Zimbabwe (2013), New Waves Institute of Dance and Performance, Trinidad (2012), and Aavejak Avaaz Festival, India (2018), and to prestigious domestic venues such as Kelly Strayhorn Theater (Pittsburgh), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan), Dance Place (Washington), Maui Arts & Cultural Center (Maui), The Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles), Painted Bride Theater (Philadelphia), among others. In response to the Twin Cities Uprising (2020), she created the Kutumkāri (Relationship-making) Healing Movement series with a particular invitation to BIPOC women and femme healers. 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, re-framing understandings of Contemporary Dance from the perspective of dance-makers from global south locations, was published by Palgrave McMillan in November 2020. 

Dastak is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA, in partnership with the Bates Dance Festival, Lewiston, ME, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org. Dastak was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dastak was developed with support from the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Dastak is supported by Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The development of Dastak was made possible, in part, by the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Metro Regional Arts Council and the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Dastak is supported by grants from the Marbrook Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.