Program Order

Running Time: 92 minutes, no intermission

1. Before the Conflagration

2. World of Shadows

3. Mirror World

4. Honey

Artist Credits

CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY:  Ananya Chatterjea 

REHEARSAL & STAGING COLLABORATOR:  Marcus Young 楊墨

COMPOSER/SOUND DESIGNER:  Greg Schutte 

DRAMATURGY & ORACLE TEXT:  Sharon Bridgforth 

PERFORMERS:  Mariadela Belle Alvarez, Noelle Awadallah, Ananya Chatterjea, Kealoha Ferreira, Juliet Irving, Kavya Kaviraj, Parisha Rajbhandari, Erica Josefina Vibar Sherwood, Taylor West 

COMPOSITION & PERFORMANCE OF VOCALS:  Mankwe Ndosi, Pooja Goswami Pavan, Aida Shaghasemi, Thupten Dadak ADDITIONAL VOCALS & TEXT:  Kavya Chirayil, Kealoha Ferreira,  Belle Alvarez, Noelle Awadallah, Ananya Chatterjea 

BOLS (syllabic accompaniment) CREATED AND RECITED BY: Ananya Chatterjea 

SCENIC & PROP DESIGN:  Mina Kinukawa 

SCENIC CONSTRUCTION:  Eric Gustafson and Austin Stiers with special thanks to the Park Square Scene Shop 

COSTUME DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION:  Annie Cady 

LIGHTING DESIGN:  Kevin A. Jones 

MEDIA DESIGN:  Darren Johnson, Northern Dawn Media 

OPENING DEDICATION TO MNI SOTA MAKOCE:  Janice Bad Moccasin

About ANTARANGA: Between You and Me

Antaranga: Between You and Me is the first work in a duology, and explores themes of intimacy, connection, trust, and community among BIPOC women/femmes. Antaranga is set in a world in deep crisis (much like our own) where most people have lost their ability to sense the energy of other human beings and can no longer recognize or connect with each other. A few humsafar (Urdu for “fellow travelers”) remain, blessed with super-connecting and heart-opening powers. As they undertake perilous journeys, they forge connectivities that may yet heal the world.

Support for ANTARANGA: Between You and Me

Creation, development, and production of ANTARANGA: Between You and Me is supported by: 

the Regional Cultural Treasures Fund of the Ford, Bush, Jerome, and McKnight Foundations;  

the McKnight Foundation;  

the Ford Foundation;  

the Mardag Foundation;  

the F. R. Bigelow Foundation; 

and the Constellations Culture Change Fund at Amalgamated Charitable Foundation. 

Antaranga: Between You and Me is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Dance Place (Washington D.C.), the John Michael Kohler Art Center (Sheboygan), Links Hall (Chicago), The Yard (Chimark, MA), and NPN. More information: npnweb.org. 

Ananya Dance Theatre is a 2023 NDP Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation in support of Antaranga: Between You and Me and to address continued sustainability needs. 

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. 

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov. 

Ananya Dance Theatre is supported in part by New Music USA’s Organization Fund which receives support from the Cheswatyr Foundation, Fifth House  Ensemble, and legacy contributions to the organization’s endowment. 

Thank you to our many individual contributors, who have powered our dancing since 2005.

A New Mythology 

During the creation process for ANTARANGA, Chatterjea and the ensemble built a new mythos as a metaphor for our times — not to create a fantasy world, but to ground in and make sense of our current moment of rising fascism, genocide, and division. This mythos tells how the humsafar were born at the moment of equinox, when Chiron (the Wounded Healer planet) was looking up in wonder at the luminous full moon. In this auspicious moment, the humsafar were blessed with sea-anemone-like nervous systems, open and responsive, and  with remarkable heart-opening powers. These people share two critical abilities: Super-Connecting and Super-Conducting. As Super-Connectors, they remain deeply connected to other life forms, and sense the pain and desire of other humans, and of animal and plant life, finding in each the source of healing that is deeply needed in the world. As Super-Conductors, they can create magnetic fields and hold on to the vibratory charge of human energy, opening a cycle of healing. Their deep understanding of energy allows them to intuit the ritualistic openings of portals. These nine humsafar include the Healer (Parisha Rajbhandari), the Sorcerer (Kealoha Ferreira), the Wound Carrier (Ananya Chatterjea), the Lightning Striker (Noelle Awadallah), the Wind Weaver (Sonny Irving), the Circle Holder (Erica Josefina Vibar Sherwood), the Water Bearer (Taylor West), the Path Carver (Kavya Chirayil), and the Earth Churner (Belle Alvarez). Antaranga launches the next multi-year series in ADT’s repertoire: Futures Forward.

Note from Ananya Chatterjea, Artistic Director and Choreographer

As we approach our 20th season, we are turning our focus towards manifesting a truly liberatory future. How can we build a future that is beyond our current experience and understanding? Can we inaugurate just and beautiful worlds by conjuring them through embodied practices? It may feel like science fiction —  but we need fiction to find justice, because it feels so rare in the real world. The worlds that Antaranga travels through are the refracted reality of our times. They may seem fantastical, but truth is stranger than fiction: a world in which  so many children are killed in genocide should be a thing of fantasy, not reality.  Antaranga begins at the peak of crisis, when light and agency have nearly vanished, and the Super-Connectors are torn apart from each other, lost. Their journeys to  reconnect and heal take them across a world overhung by shadows; another world fraught with distorting mirrors; until they finally arrive at a world immersed in honey, where they are able to move into a care-filled kinship that blossoms into intimate connection. 

It has been deeply meaningful for me to construct this new mythos in creative response to our current global crises, rent with genocide, war, and epidemics of hate. It is my hope that the metaphoric journeys of these archetypal characters, as they grow into their full strength and community, offer patterns for negotiating our own future. The creative process has been awash with questions about what it means to make art at a time of unspeakable violence, uncaring, and heart-break, and the consequent urgency of dreaming towards a just future. The experience of making and dancing Antaranga: Between You and Me has been a spiritual search: for closeness through dance; for choreography and staging where belonging and care-filled holding of each other across difference is cherished.

About Ananya Dance Theatre 

Ananya Dance Theater, an ensemble company of BIPOC women and femme professional dance artists, creates original contemporary dance theater at the intersection of artistic excellence and social justice. We work to dismantle hierarchies and build liberation, inspired by the lives and dreams of BIPOC women and femmes around the globe. Our company was named a Regional Cultural Treasure by a joint initiative of the Ford Foundation and McKnight Foundation in 2021. We will celebrate our 20th season in 2025. 

Through our dancing, we: 

•  Reach Out in Solidarity with Global Liberation Struggles
•  Reach In for Intersectional Justice
•  Practice with Rigor & Excellence
•  Center Interconnected Relationship
•  Build Feminist Ensemble
•  Uplift Difference and Aesthetic/Cultural Specificity 

Our artistry unfolds through Yorchhā, our devised contemporary feminist dance form, which embodies our response to the Western/Euro-American movement practices that dominate the contemporary dance world. Yorchhā proudly claims the descriptors “contemporary” and “innovative” even as it celebrates its creation from a careful and intentional deconstruction and reassembly of traditional Odissi, Vinyasa Yoga, and the martial art Chhau. Every year (since 2005), we create an original evening-length work with a new, commissioned score. Our ensemble has performed across the U.S. and internationally: Harare, Zimbabwe; Port of Spain, Trinidad; Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories; Delhi and Pragiyoti, India; Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Since June 2018, our convening, teaching, and rehearsal home has been the Shawngrām Institute for Performance & Social Justice, on University Avenue (at the convergence of Hamline-Midway, Frogtown, and Historic Rondo neighborhoods) in St. Paul, MN.

About Links Hall

For 46 years, Links Hall has played a pivotal role in Chicago, encouraging artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development, and presentation of new work in the performing arts. Founded in 1978 by experimental choreographers, Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon, Links became a National Performance Network partner in 1998 and received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2016. Links Hall supports multidisciplinary artists through residencies, festivals, subsidized rentals, and other resources for performers at every stage of their career.

Links Hall programming is made possible by artists, audiences, and support from: Arts Midwest GIG Fund, Association of Performing Arts Professionals, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Exelon, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Heather B. Henson Fund/Puppet Slam Network, Illinois Arts Council Agency, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, National Performance Network, The Charlie Vernon Performance Fund at the Evanston Community Foundation, The Jentes Family Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at Prince, The Martha Struthers Farley & Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation, The Prince Charitable Trust, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and The Weasel Fund.

STAFF

Aaliyah Christina, Artist Programs Manager & Associate Curator

SK Kerastas, Executive Director

Mario LaMothe, General Manager

Dana Pepowski, Programs Associate

Giau Truong, Production Manager & Associate Curator

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Amy Chavasse - Artistic Director of Chavasse Dance & Performance; Professor at University of Michigan

Jane Beachy - Artistic Director of Illinois Humanities

J’Sun Howard - U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Creative Fellow; Professor at Northwestern University

Ross Stanton Jordan - Curatorial Manager of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Susan Manning - Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University

Trevor Martin -  Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at SAIC

Jon Pagac - Executive Director at J.P.Morgan

Tina Post - Assistant Professor of English and Theater and Performance Studies & affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago

Doreen Sayegh - Producer & General Manager with Pemberley Productions

Michael Tokoph - Associate Director of Product Strategy at Huge

Patrick Zakem - Creative Producer at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

ADVISORY BOARD

Cheryl Lynn Bruce - Actor, Playwright, Director, and Ensemble Member of Teatro Vista

Bob Eisen - Co-Founder of Links Hall

E. Aaron Greven - Owner of AG Design Works

Tracie D. Hall - Former Executive Director of the American Libraries Association

Maggie Kast - Author and Founder of Chicago Contemporary Dance Theatre

Meida McNeal - Director of Honey Pot Performance and Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Grants and Resources at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events

Eva Silverman - Project Director at Art Design Chicago

Claire Sutton - Former Director of Special Events at Links Hall

Blair Thomas - Founder and Artistic Director of Chicago International Puppetry Festival

Michael Zerang - Musician and Former Links Hall Director