Ananya dancers take on capitalism in 'Shaatranga'

Updated: Sept. 22 | Posted: Sept. 19

The first word in the title of Ananya Dance Theatre's new show, "Shaatranga: Women Weaving Worlds," means seven colors in the Bengali language. But the company's founder, Ananya Chatterjea, says the performance was initially inspired by the color blue.

"It's about taking the blues that I think women of color are framed in and transforming it into this multi-sensorial, many-hued experience," she said.

Women of color are too often portrayed as suffering, Chatterjea said, when their lives are far more richly layered and complex.

"Shaatranga" is perhaps the company's most ambitious work yet as it attempts to convey the effects of systems like capitalism on communities of color. In order to better imagine a world free from the legacies of colonialism and slavery, Chatterjea said, company members looked back in time, before the transatlantic slave trade.

"There were these trade routes across the global South that connected all of Africa, Asia, South America before colonialism and slavery," she said.

Company members looked specifically at the production and trade of indigo dye, a product that was coveted across continents but produced mainly in India. It was traded for thousands of years.

The company performed excerpts from the show at a recent public workshop in its new studio on University Avenue in St. Paul. Some dances featured indigo cloth dyed by the company. In one dance, women were drawn to a display of golden, glittery shoes.

The women fought over the shiny objects until only one dancer was left standing, holding one shoe, at first triumphant, but then doubtful. What was it all for? The dance captures the contemporary rat race of capitalism.

"As an immigrant, I know this narrative of 'First you get a job, then you buy a car, then you buy a house, then you buy a washer and a dryer,'" Chatterjea said. "It's this tremendous cycle that you can't get out of ... because the system is built on never getting there."

Throughout the evening of dances was woven a thread of a narrative ... women voyaging together in solidarity, then being divided by colonization and capitalism, and then slowly, determinedly, finding their way back to one another.

Kealoha Ferreira has danced with Ananya for five years. She's Hawaiian and grew up at a time when people were working to recover indigenous wisdom around canoe-building and navigation, launching large-scale expeditions across oceans using Polynesian voyaging techniques.

As part of their research, Ferreira and the other dancers met with master navigators and learned about what it's like to live at sea and how the outrigger canoes were built. "All of that has gone into our pieces, specifically our first piece and last piece, where we really try to embody what it would be like to be on an ocean voyage together," she said.

Being a member of Ananya Dance Theatre isn't just about dancing; it's a way of life. The women train regularly together in a mix of yoga, martial arts and traditional East Indian dance. When they rehearse, they discuss emotions and intention as much as movement. Ferreira said they spend a lot of time learning about each other's culture and history.

"I think what is so transformative about the work is that what it means for us to be in an ensemble together requires that we really understand what it means to be in solidarity with each other," she said. "To stand behind, to stand with, and at moments to take the lead and stand in front."

Ananya Dance Theatre performs "Shaatranga" this Friday and Saturday night at the O'Shaughnessy in St. Paul.

Ferreira said she hopes audiences will be inspired by the performance to find new ways of connecting with one another while respecting individual differences.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story referred to Polynesian sailing vessels as "boats." It's more accurate to refer to them as outrigger canoes or multi-hulled voyaging canoes. We've updated the story to reflect that.

Correction (Sept. 22, 2018): An earlier version of this story misspelled "Shaatranga". The story has been updated.