This two-part Art + Water Workshop series with Ananya Dance Theatre explores the ways water and love of public places intersect. Inspired by Ananya Dance Theatre’s summer of projects centered on the notion of public love, we will carry stories of water into this practice together.
The first session on Thursday, July 23, begins with a movement meditation led by Ananya Chatterjea, then moves into collage-making. Led by Jay Claire, we will assemble a communal collaged River Tapestry as we consider the ripple effects of our own stories and actions of love for water.
In the second session on Saturday, August 1, we will share stories about occupation and liberation and ways that water teaches us how to flow. Celebrated singer/songwriter Mankwe Ndosi will teach musical phrases from the song she composed for Ananya Dance Theatre’s fall show: PREM | Love: An Occupation, and Ananya Chatterjea will share of simple gestures of choreography.
This gathering culminates in an outdoor procession around the gardens of CRWD, with the River Tapestry created in the previous workshop. Through public singing, gestures, and offerings, we will express a transformative public love for water and all of life.
Registration is preferred but not required. No dance or musical experience is needed! All ages are welcome! Light snacks provided. All activities are designed to meet people where they are. Attending both workshops is encouraged but not required.
Art + Water Workshops are organized by CRWD Artist-in-Residence Sarah Peters and CRWD Community Engagement Coordinator Maricella Xiong.
Ananya Dance Theatre is an ensemble company of transnational feminist professional dance artists who create and perform social justice choreography.
Ananya Chatterjea’s (she/her) work as a choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a commitment to healing justice. She is the creator of Yorchhā, Ananya Dance Theatre’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 a recipient of the 2021 A. P. Andersen Award. Her work has toured to numerous national and international venues. Ananya is Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches courses in Dance Studies and contemporary practice. Her most recent publication is an anthology, Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice (Univ. of Washington Press, 2022), co-edited with Hui Wilcox and Alessandra Williams. Ananya is grateful to all the artists and collaborators she works with for their light and practice of excellence, and is thankful to her family for their support.
Jay Claire (they/them) is a Euro-American carpenter, theatrical technician, production manager, and outdoor educator from Sacramento, California. Jay’s professional life centers art-work as liberatory praxis, and seeks to engage queer joy, gender foolery, and ecstatic embodiment as radically nourishing (and gleefully destabilizing!) forces. Since receiving their BA in Theatre and Dance from Macalester College, they have worked in various capacities with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Mixed Blood Theatre, the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and Theatre Mu. As an outdoor educator, Jay’s focus is cultivating curiosity, gratitude, and right relationship with our beyond-human relatives.
Mankwe Ndosi has been working in the Twin Cities and Chicago for more than two decades as a music-maker, performer, educator and culture weaver focused on sound, story, and expanding the vocabulary of singing. She weaves improvisation/performance composition through many sonic worlds. She collaborates with organizers, musicians, gardeners, farmers, dancers, MC’s, visual artists, theatre producers, and educators. Ms. Ndosi received her B.S. in Social Studies from Harvard/Radcliffe, and uses her social science background to inform her art. She seeks to infuse creative practice back into the worlds of healing, education, and new village community building.