Reframes dance as an intersectional practice of community-building and just world-makingThrough empowered movement that centers the lives, stories, and dreams of marginalized women, Ananya Dance Theatre has revealed how the practice of and commitment to artistic excellence can catalyze social justice. With each performance, this professional dance company of Black, Brown, and Indigenous gender non-conforming women and femmes of color challenges heteronormative patriarchies, white supremacist paradigms, and predatory global capitalism. Their creative artistic processes and vital interventions have transformed the spaces of contemporary concert dance into sites of empowerment, resistance, and knowledge production.Drawing from more than fifteen years of collaborative dance-making and sustained dialogues based on deep alliances across communities of color, Dancing Transnational Feminisms offers a multigenre exploration of how dance can be intersectionally reimagined as practice, methodology, and metaphor for feminist solidarity. Blending essays with stories, interviews, and poems, this collection explores timely questions surrounding race and performance, gender and sexuality, art and politics, global and local inequities, and the responsibilities of artists toward their communities.

List of IllustrationsForeword by D. Soyini MadisonAcknowledgmentsDancing and Writing TogetherFeminist Embodiments, Transnational Solidarities Ananya Chatterjea, Hui Niu Wilcox, and Alessandra Lebea WilliamsPART I. MULTIPLE IDENTITIES: SHARED DREAMS OF COLLECTIVE DANCING1. Historical Ruminations: Breath, Heat, and Movement-Building Ananya Chatterjea2. "It's Been My Community": Interview with Gina Lynn Kaur Kundan Alessandra Lebea Williams3. Ananya Dance Theatre as Social Justice Experiment: Where We Were in 2005, Where We Are Now Shannon Gibney4. The Gone Bird Song Chitra Vairavan5. Dance of the Spiraling Generations: On Love and Healing with Ananya Dance Theatre Hui Niu WilcoxPART II. EMBODYING SOLIDARITIES AND INTERSECTIONS: BLACK AND BROWN DANCING6. Femininity, Breaking That Boundary: Interview with Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. Alessandra Lebea Williams7. Loving Deeply: Black and Brown Women and Femmes in the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic of Laurie Carlos and the Yorchha Practice of Ananya Dance TheatreAlessandra Lebea Williams8. Emerald City Renée Copeland9. Dancing Black Militancies: Written Meditation on Performance, Black(female)ness, and Dance as Ecological Resistance in Ananya Dance TheatreZenzele Isoke, with Naimah PetignyPART III. TRANSGRESSING SPACE AND BORDERS: LOCAL POLITICS, TRANSNATIONAL EPISTEMES10. Mindful Space-Making: Crossing Boundaries with Ananya Dance TheatreSurafel Wondimu Abebe11. Speculative Choreography: Futures of Feminist Food Justice and SovereigntyJigna Desai12. Musings on Crossing: Ananya Dance Theatre in Addis AbabaHui Niu Wilcox13. Ananya Dance Theatre and the Twin Cities: Community and DanceDavid Mura14. Forecast Mankwe NdosiPART IV. AGAINST CATEGORIES OF TIME: HISTORY, TRADITION, CONTEMPORARY DANCE15. This Stage Is Not a Safe Space Thomas F. DeFrantz16. My Work Is Worth the Struggle Sherie C. M. Apungu17. Ananya Dance Theatre in the Genealogy of Women of Color FeminismRoderick A. Ferguson18. Absence/Presence/Silence/NoiseToni Shapiro-PhimPART V. IMAGINING RESISTANCE AND HOPE19. A Politics of Hope: Letters, Dance, and Dreams Patricia DeRocher, Simi Kang, and Richa Nagar20. A Personal Reckoning: Reflections from Duurbaar to MohonaBrenda Dixon-Gottschild21. Fire from Dry Grass Nimo Hussein Farah22. Affirmation Ananya ChatterjeaList of Contributors Index