Ananya Chatterjea(Ananya Chatterjea)This excerpt of the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.When many think of art as protest, they think of music, literature, even the visual arts, but Ananya Chatterjea, a contemporary Indian dancer and scholar, reminds us not to leave out dance.Ch atterjea is a choreographer and professor living in Minneapolis.Race Unwrapped Host and producer Michelle Tyrene Johnson talks with Chatterjea about how dance is instrumental in supporting her community as it has been at the forefront of many high-profile protests. Chatterjea is featured in the latest season of the award-winning LPM podcast “Race Unwrapped.”Michelle Tyrene Johnson: You created a justice and community-oriented methodology of choreography. Could you explain what that means?Ananya Chatterjee: This idea of making dance as a thing in itself, separate from the people, did not appeal to me. So I wanted to know what are the stories of these Black and brown women and femme people from around the world. What are our stories? How do we share our stories, our dreams, our hopes, our struggles, and our joys? So that's how it came to be. Like listening to people, chatting with people became the source material for making work. The methodology of dance making began by story weaving, by collecting, talking to each other, weaving together our story fragments. That's how I ended up creating this methodology of dance making, which is both about our dreams and about the present condition of injustice and about the justice dreams we have.MTJ: So, you sound like you're very thoughtful in how you do all of that. I speak for just myself when I say that when I think of protest or social justice art, I don't typically think of dance. So I would love it if you could tell me why I am completely short-sighted on that.AC: Right at the center of all the experience of injustice is our bodies experiencing it. The moment we look at each other, we recognize things about the body on which there are layers of stereotypes and there are layers of experience. We experience the world differently as Black and brown people. We experience the world differently because of our gender, because of our sexual orientation, because of physical ability; all these issues, the body is at the center of the vectors of identity that we have, and the way in which experience shapes us. They all impinge on the body. So I feel like I understand what it means to sort of cower down in fear. I understand what it means to have an open heart. So what better medium than dance to actually articulate our experiences? And there's a very famous quote by a feminist, I think Emma Goldstein, who says, "If dance is not part of the revolution, I want nothing of it.”MTJ: Yes, absolutely. I was thinking the other day that if you can't see someone's face clearly, you can usually get an idea of what their age is by how they move. And I guess all movement is a form of dance.AC: Maybe I can hold up my colleagues in the field who are disabled artists in dance who remind us that the way our bodies move is telling our own story.MTJ: Could you tell me a little bit about your cultural background and how it plays a part in what you do?AC: I am from the eastern part of India, Bengal. So I identify as Bengali. With the people in Bangladesh, who are also Bengali, we share language, poets, songs, what we eat, but we are divided by religion. I was dancing when I was growing up, learning both the traditional dance, which had a more sort of spiritual aspect, and I was learning folk dances, dance about the people, of the people, by the people. There was class-struggle-oriented dance that was also part of Bengal's culture that I learned and I loved, and all the revolutionary songs that came down from the anti-colonial protests into the era of class struggle. That entered my blood with great strength, and ultimately pushed me to reject what came to be known as the traditional dance.MTJ: You're located in the Minneapolis area, and that means that you have been part of the heart of two major protest movements: the George Floyd protests in 2020, and then the ICE protest this year. How have you engaged with those protests?AC: While the George Floyd protest uprising following the murder of George Floyd was one of the largest, I want to say that actually the history of protest in the Twin Cities goes back a long time. The murder of Jamar Clark, of Philando Castile. We have a long history of this, and we often show up to the protests. Because it's happening right here, how are we not going to go? And I have collaborators with whom we offer our dance to sometimes at these sites, dance of both grieving and pushback, and they enter our works. ...read more read less