Announcing transformative and affirming events and collaborating artists for Soham’s AiR program

Soham Dance Space expands the depth of public programs with “Year of Chicago Dance” support for Artist-in-Residence Program.

National and local artists, curators, and scholars participate in culminating events with Artist-in-Residence Parijat Desai.

Unceded land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, also known as CHICAGO, IL, (August 17, 2022) - Soham Dance Space, led by Artistic Director Anjal Chande, has received a CityArts Year of Chicago Dance Project Grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for its Artist-in-Residence public programs from August 30 through September 22, 2022. Developed over the course of 18 months of deep listening, dialogue, and exchange between peer artists/producers Anjal Chande and Parijat Desai, the AiR public programs grew out of their examining, questioning, and building opportunities for South Asian artists who push outside narrow canons.

Soham’s AiR public programs hold space for artists from different communities to inspire and influence one another and the public. From a national Transform | Affirm Kick-Off Convening, through the local How Do I Become WE creation process, Dance In The Round workshop series, and Circle Summit, Chande and Desai hope these touchpoints will result in ripples and waves that lead to creative connections between and among experimental, marginalized artists’ practices and the larger community, and continue well beyond these activities.

Transform | Affirm Kick-Off Convening on Zoom on Tuesday, August 30 is a reflection on experimentation amongst marginalized practitioners: what’s missing in the field, how we’re bridging the gap, and what keeps us excited and affirmed. Moderated by Anjal Chande, the convening features Parijat Desai along with Dr. Meiver de la Cruz, Nadia Khayrallah, ​​Meena Murugesan, and Bhumi B. Patel.

Dr. Meiver De la Cruz (she/they) is a scholar, artist, and activist, and writes about diasporic movement practices and global performance epistemologies. She has served on faculty at numerous colleges including Oberlin, Scripps, and Whitman College, teaching dance studies, queer, feminist and performance theory, critical theory, intersectional justice, feminist ethnographic methods, and dance technique. She currently resides on the historic homeland of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes, in Washington State. 

Nadia Khayrallah (they/them) is a dance artist, writer, educator, and (dis)content creator who performs with Jonah Bokaer Choreography and Gotham Dance Theater, writes for thINKingDANCE, and has hosted discussions on racial and economic justice in the dance field through Dance/NYC. They are based on the homeland of the Lenape (Lenapehoking) politically designated as New York City. www.nadiakhayrallah.com

​​Meena Murugesan (they/them) is a Bessie Award winning video and movement artist who creates experimental narratives at the intersection of live performance, video art installation, and social issues. Meena grapples with the practises of collage, projection mapping, contemplative documentary, improvisation, somatic bodywork and bharatanatyam. They are currently directing a multimedia work entitled Dravidian Futurities about African-Dravidian connections, casteism, colorism, and trance/possession movement rituals. They live on Tongva-Kizh land. http://meenamurugesan.com/

Bhumi B. Patel (she/they) is a queer, desi artist/activist, choreographer, dance writer/scholar, and director of pateldanceworks.  Patel pursues liberation through dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, and writing/scholarship. Bhumi is currently a doctoral student at The Ohio State University while based on the ancestral lands and territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. www.pateldanceworks.org

Parijat Desai will be working with local dance artists Timothy “Solomon” Bowser, Silvita Diaz Brown, Darling “Shear” Squire, Ayanna Uhuru, and Destine (D’Roc) Young as collaborators contributing to the artistic development of Desai’s newest project How Do I Become WE (HDIBW), a performance and participatory ritual built around a Tamil folk tale of a woman who has a story stuck inside her. Employing culturally rooted and experimental practices, Desai’s choreographic process focuses on reconnecting with the natural world and individual participant’s inner power, releasing hurt, and activating the collective body. Desai’s work with the Chicago artists is building on her 2022 residencies at Gibney (NYC) in June and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in February. An excerpt of HDIBW will be part of Desai’s Dance in The Round Workshop Series in partnership with Night Out in the Parks 10th Anniversary season at Indian Boundary, Washington and Julia de Burgos parks. The free workshops harness the energy and spirit of garba, the participatory circle dance form of India, toward healing, inclusion, activation, and community. No prior dance experience or particular ability is required. In addition, a workshop with Chicago Desi Youth Rising will be held at Soham Dance Space.

Timothy “Solomon” Bowser is from Stone Mountain, GA, holds a BA from Columbia College Chicago, and. has performed with Winifred Haun (where he created and premiered MATTER), Deeply Rooted, The Seldoms, Kanopy, Motion Pictures Project and Kalapriya. Collaborators include independent artists & visionaries: J'Sun Howard, Dedrick Banks, Damon Green, Jared Brown, Talia Koylass, Carson Reiners, Jasmin Taylor and Chance The Rapper. Bowser received a Links Hall 2017 Intensive Co-Mission Residency and is currently a Lab Assistant for Slippage, Northwestern University’s performance research lab. Bowser seeks to perform/create work that investigates and honors the spirit that ties one life to another. 

Silvita Diaz Brown (she/her) is a Mexican/American choreographer, dancer, actor, acrobat, yoga instructor and director of Sildance/AcroDanza. Based in Chicago since 2008, she holds a BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Mexico and an MFA in Theatre/Movement from York University, Canada. For the last 15 years, her interdisciplinary dance work has been presented at venues and festivals in Spain, India, and throughout North America. Silvita seeks to discover and articulate deep strengths and insights that inspire women and audiences to feel empowered in their identities and futures no matter where they come from. www.silvitadiazbrownsildanceacrodanza.com

Darling “Shear” Squire is a Chicago Native with Atlanta roots and trained in Ballet, Modern, Jazz and African. After high school, Darling began dancing professionally with Bubba Carr, Cher’s choreographer, Rhonda Henriksen, Twyla Tharp, Tracy Vogt, Hinton Battle, and Lauri Stallings. As a freelance dancer/ choreographer, Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys, Soho House Chicago, EXPO Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, MCA, Salonathon, Open TV and many others. Awards include: Impulstanz Between Gestures scholarship (Vienna, Austria), Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, CDF 10X10 Choreographer, Links Hall CoMission Fellowship, 3Arts nominee (2019, 2022). Darling's career has been one with a strong spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being. www.darlingshearblog.wordpress.com

Ayanna Uhuru (she/her), from the Southside of Chicago, is a multi-disciplinary artist who utilizes dance, music, visual art, poetry, and storytelling as spiritual devotion and cultural education. Ayanna has performed with Momentum Dance Theatre, The Willingham Project, Flo Fiyah, and Ayodele Drum and Dance and studied ballet, jazz, tap, Horton, salsa, Graham, contemporary, and West African at Studio One Dance Conservatory, Gallery 37, Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Howard University, and The Ailey School. She uses dance as a healing modality for herself, audiences, students, and communities and currently studies and practices shamanism, lukumi, yoga, reiki, and other healing traditions.

Destine (D'Roc) Young is a native Chicagoan who began dancing at an early age. Holding a B.A. in Dance from Columbia College Chicago, she works extensively as a performer, educator, curator and choreographer exploring relationships between contemporary, martial arts, and hip-hop street dance. 'The Ground Rhythm Method' is her movement-based healing method that supports social, mental, and spiritual development. Awards include: 2020 DCASE IAP Grant, 2019 Chicago Park District NOIP Grant, 2018 Chicago Community Trust Young Leaders Fund Award, and HCL 2018 Sponsored Artist. Destine is enrolled in the Masters Program at Bradley University to become a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. She is also a company member with Red Clay Dance. 

Inspired by the Artists’ Sessions at Studio 35 (1950) published by Julia Klein of Chicago’s Soberscove Press, Soham is holding an interdisciplinary Circle Summit - bringing together Desai and local artists to discuss the power of circles as artistic and communal structures to bring about change. Choreographer Ayako Kato whose blue fish and Green Tea concert dance works invite the audience to join in a Japanese circle dance, performance artist Maya Odim’s research into libratory and praise dancing and the Igbo Women’s War in Nigeria in 1929, and filmmaker Diana Quiñones Rivera whose 2021 documentary Resistimos revealed the role Bomba - an Afro-Puerto Rican drum and dance form - played in the anti-corruption movement in 2016. Like the Artists’ Sessions, the Circle Summit will be documented to be shared publicly.

Ayako Kato (she/her) is a kinetic philosopher/poet and contemporary choreographer/dancer originally from Japan. She started Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape in 1998 to be in deep collaboration with live music and grounded on the principles of fūryū, Japanese for “wind flow”, cyclical transformation, and human motion in nature. Her obsession with circle dances and incorporating them in her work began in 2017. Recent awards include, City of Chicago 2022 Esteemed Artist Award and Montalvo Arts Center 3Arts Residency Fellowship (Saratoga, CA). In fall 2022, she tours to five cities in Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium. www.ayakokatodance.com

Maya Odim (she/they) is a poet and movement artist practicing contemporary, breaking, and afro caribbean dance. Maya purposefully mounts work in performance spaces which challenge occidental approaches to performance praxis. Of African American, Igbo and Afro-Cuban lineage, Maya holds a BA in American Studies (Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT) and is an MFA Writing candidate at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where Maya will explore impacts of socio-cultural experience on performing & performance culture through work with poetry and varying forms of communal dance; at SAIC Maya will be specifically studying the Igbo Women's War of 1929. www.mayaodim.com

Diana Quiñones Rivera (she/her) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker based in Chicago since 2015. Since her move away from the East Coast, Diana has collaborated with numerous local artists on music videos, promos, documentaries and a docu-series. After completing a 6 year documentary project called Resistimos about the Bomba dance and music community in Puerto Rico, she's been dedicating her time to screenwriting and teaching film. www.monserati.com

WHEN & WHERE & HOW MUCH

Transform | Affirm Kick-Off Convening

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 @7pm on Zoom

Free with registration.

“Dance In The Round” at Night Out in the Parks 10th Anniversary Season, rain or shine:

Saturday, September 10 @ 2pm in Indian Boundary Park, 2500 W Lunt AVE, Chicago, IL 60645 

Saturday, September 17 @ 5:30pm in Washington Park, 5531 S King DR, Chicago, IL 60615

Sunday, September 18 @ 5:30pm in Julia de Burgos Park, 1805 N Albany AVE, Chicago, IL 60647

All are free and require no registration.

“Dance In The Round” Workshop with Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR)

Sunday, September 11, 2022

For CDYR members.

Circle Summit

Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at Soham Dance Space

Documentation of the summit will be shared publicly on Soham’s blog.

WHO:

Dance artist Parijat Desai creates hybrids of contemporary, Gujarati folk, Indian neoclassical dance and experimental theater. By building bridges across diverse forms and disciplines, Desai challenges the idea of cultural purity that lies under xenophobia and nationalism in the U.S. and India. As Artistic Director of Parijata Dance Company, she also leads Dance In The Round, sharing circle dances from Gujarat, India, and reframing these ancestral practices to be inclusive across age, ability, gender, and caste, and support community well-being and activation. As a member of the SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists) collective, her design work with collaborator Dedalus Wainwright will appear in Kinetic Visualities, an exhibition at Wesleyan University this October. She has received commissions from Danspace Project, Harlem Stage, Grand Performances/LA, and the New York State Council for the Arts. Her work has been presented at: (New York City) La MaMa, Asia Society, Queens Museum, BRIC Arts Media; (Los Angeles) Skirball Cultural Center, California Plaza, The J. Paul Getty Center; (San Francisco) Asian Art Museum, ODC Theater; The Denver Art Museum; (Vancouver) The Dance Center (Chicago); and Mumbai at National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai). She has won a NYFA BUILD grant, Lester Horton Dance Award for Individual Performance, Chhaya Arts and Activism Award, and a Fulbright Scholar Award. Her work has received support from the Mellon and Mertz Gilmore Foundations and Foundation for Contemporary Art. www.parijatdesai.org

Soham Dance Space fosters, realizes, and advances the artistic vision of Anjal Chande by supporting a home for creative practice, live performance, critical dialogue, and community gatherings. Founded in 2007 on the unceded land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, also known as Chicago, Soham is committed to ongoing examination of its privileged and marginalized positionality in all of the work it undertakes. Soham believes that artists reflect upon our humanity in indispensable ways. Soham believes creative exchange inspires our individual and collective transformation. Soham develops alternatives to hierarchical practices, and embodies anti-racist, anti-casteist, and anti-ableist values. Directed by Chande’s expansive vision for creative practice, Soham has evolved from an innovative bharatanatyam studio into a home for a broader ecosystem and community of practicing artists. www.sohamdancespace.org 

Soham Dance Space Artist-in-Residence Program: The Artist-in-Residence (A-i-R)  program aims to uplift, complicate, and reframe South Asian dance in the diaspora. This 18-month program celebrates one experimental artist of the South Asian diaspora, fosters nuanced dialogue with the artist throughout the residency, and presents public programs that showcase the artist’s work. This initiative emerged from reflections on the absence of producers and presenters who are able to appreciate the wide range of aesthetics, motivations, and politics of South Asian American dance artists. Too often, artists face a degree of tokenization, a shallow, over-simplified engagement with their work, or an inability to foreground personal, idiosyncratic relationships with form and identity. The inability for arts ecosystem gatekeepers to grasp how artists may be departing from or paying homage to their roots, for example, undermines the artist, limits the potential for transformative connections with audiences, and reinforces outdated and often harmful conceptual boxes. Soham’s program disrupts prevalent paradigms and spotlights the multiplicity of South Asian contemporary practices.

“Dance In The Round” is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series, supported by the Mayor’s Office and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Celebrating 10 years, the 2022 Night Out in the Parks program presents cultural events year-round in neighborhood parks throughout the city. The Chicago Park District in partnership with over 100 local artists and organizations, present engaging events and performances that enhance quality of life across Chicago and amplify the artistic and cultural vibrancy in every neighborhood. Through multiple disciplines, which include theater, music, movies, dance, site-specific work, nature programs, and community festivals, the series aims to support Chicago-based artists, facilitate community-based partnerships and programs, cultivate civic engagement, and ensure equity in access to the arts for all Chicagoans. www.nightoutintheparks.com

In deep partnership with the local dance community, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) have designated 2022 as the Year of Chicago Dance. This citywide, year-long focus on dance is the first of its kind in the U.S. The collaborative initiative will activate Chicago’s dance industry to address critical issues facing dancers and the field of dance including funding, space, and capacity building — and to consider the sustainability of this work. The Year of Chicago Dance will, of course, also include dance performances, social dancing, and special events for the public in dozens of venues throughout the city. The 2022 Year of Chicago Dance follows the successes of 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020/21 initiatives, which highlighted Chicago's public art, our creative youth, and the city's vibrant theatre and music scenes. Partners include dance service organizations Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and See Chicago Dance — as well as Art on theMART, Night Out in the Parks at the Chicago Park District and many other presenters and funders. For updates throughout the year, visit Chicago.gov/Dance and and  YearofChicagoDance.com and join the conversation on social media using #YearofChicagoDance.

MORE INFO: High resolution images available here.

AiR Video Capsule: https://vimeo.com/739674945

Website: https://www.sohamdancespace.org/artist-in-residence

# # #