"Dancing Transnational Feminisms brings together reflections and critical responses about the embodied creative practices that have been part of the work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a Twin Cities-based dance company of women of color who work at the intersections of artistic excellence and social justice. Focusing on ADT's creative processes and organizational strategies, the book highlights how women and femme artists of color, working with a marginalized movement aesthetic, claim and transform the spaces of contemporary concert dance into sites of empowerment, resistance, and knowledge production. Blending essays with epistolary texts, interviews and poems, the collection's contributors offer up a multigenre exploration of how dance and other artistic undertakings can be intersectionally reimagined. Building on more than fifteen years of collaborative dance-making and sustained dialogues, Dancing Transnational Feminisms delves into timely questions surrounding race and performance, art and politics,global and local inequities and the responsibilities of artists towards the communities they come from"--
Through empowered movement that centers the lives, stories, and dreams of marginalized women, Ananya Dance Theatre has revealed how the practice of and commitment to artistic excellence can catalyze social justice. With each performance, this professional dance company of Black, Brown, and Indigenous gender non-conforming women and femmes of color challenges heteronormative patriarchies, white supremacist paradigms, and predatory global capitalism. Their creative artistic processes and vital interventions have transformed the spaces of contemporary concert dance into sites of empowerment, resistance, and knowledge production.
Drawing from more than fifteen years of collaborative dance-making and sustained dialogues based on deep alliances across communities of color, Dancing Transnational Feminisms offers a multigenre exploration of how dance can be intersectionally reimagined as practice, methodology, and metaphor for feminist solidarity. Blending essays with stories, interviews, and poems, this collection explores timely questions surrounding race and performance, gender and sexuality, art and politics, global and local inequities, and the responsibilities of artists toward their communities.
