Dancing Transnational Feminisms

Ananya Chatterjea is professor of dance at the University of Minnesota. Hui Niu Wilcox is professor of sociology, critical studies of race and ethnicity, and women’s studies at St. Catherine University. Alessandra Lebea Williams is assistant professor of dance at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

List of Illustrations

Foreword by D. Soyini Madison

Acknowledgments

Dancing and Writing Together

Feminist Embodiments, Transnational Solidarities

Ananya Chatterjea, Hui Niu Wilcox, and Alessandra Lebea Williams

PART I. MULTIPLE IDENTITIES: SHARED DREAMS OF COLLECTIVE DANCING

1. Historical Ruminations: Breath, Heat, and Movement-Building

Ananya Chatterjea

2. "It's Been My Community": Interview with Gina Lynn Kaur Kundan

Alessandra Lebea Williams

3. Ananya Dance Theatre as Social Justice Experiment: Where We Were in 2005, Where We Are Now

Shannon Gibney

4. The Gone Bird Song

Chitra Vairavan

5. Dance of the Spiraling Generations: On Love and Healing with Ananya Dance Theatre

Hui Niu Wilcox

PART II. EMBODYING SOLIDARITIES AND INTERSECTIONS: BLACK AND BROWN DANCING

6. Femininity, Breaking That Boundary: Interview with Orlando Zane Hunter Jr.

Alessandra Lebea Williams

7. Loving Deeply: Black and Brown Women and Femmes in the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic of Laurie Carlos and the Yorchhā Practice of Ananya Dance Theatre

Alessandra Lebea Williams

8. Emerald City

Renée Copeland

9. Dancing Black Militancies: Written Meditation on Performance, Black(female)ness, and Dance as Ecological Resistance in Ananya Dance Theatre

Zenzele Isoke, with Naimah Petigny

PART III. TRANSGRESSING SPACE AND BORDERS: LOCAL POLITICS, TRANSNATIONAL EPISTEMES

10. Mindful Space-Making: Crossing Boundaries with Ananya Dance Theatre

Surafel Wondimu Abebe

11. Speculative Choreography: Futures of Feminist Food Justice and Sovereignty

Jigna Desai

12. Musings on Crossing: Ananya Dance Theatre in Addis Ababa

Hui Niu Wilcox

13. Ananya Dance Theatre and the Twin Cities: Community and Dance

David Mura

14. Forecast

Mankwe Ndosi

PART IV. AGAINST CATEGORIES OF TIME: HISTORY, TRADITION, CONTEMPORARY DANCE

15. This Stage Is Not a Safe Space

Thomas F. DeFrantz

16. My Work Is Worth the Struggle

Sherie C. M. Apungu

17. Ananya Dance Theatre in the Genealogy of Women of Color Feminism

Roderick A. Ferguson

18. Absence/Presence/Silence/Noise

Toni Shapiro-Phim

PART V. IMAGINING RESISTANCE AND HOPE

19. A Politics of Hope: Letters, Dance, and Dreams

Patricia DeRocher, Simi Kang, and Richa Nagar

20. A Personal Reckoning: Reflections from Duurbaar to Mohona

Brenda Dixon-Gottschild

21. Fire from Dry Grass

Nimo Hussein Farah

22. Affirmation

Ananya Chatterjea

List of Contributors

Index