Ananya Dance Theatre:

Dastak: I Wish You Me

Thursday, November 3, 7:30 p.m.

Bowker Auditorium, UMASS Fine Arts Center

Tickets Start at $20, Patrons Under 17 at $10

Led by acclaimed dancer-choreographer and educator Ananya Chatterjea, Ananya Dance Theatre is one of the nation’s leading performance ensembles of BIPOC women, womxn, and femme artists, dedicated to the transformative power of dance and social justice. A meditation on home, loss, and liberation, Dastak: I Wish You Me explores the cross-generational love that carries global communities through difficult migrations, and reimagines the possibilities of freedom. Chicago Tribune says, “Chatterjea — more than most contemporary Indian dance choreographers — has completely transformed her genre.”

Dastak is a meditation on borders, loss, belonging, home, and liberation. Structured through four elemental journeys – Earth, Water, Fire, and Air – the work traces the knockings (dastak, in Farsi) of global injustices on our hearts, and echoes the subtitle created by writer Sharon Bridgforth, I Wish You Me, indicating the cross-generational love that has carried communities through difficult migrations. Dastak invites viewers to imagine what freedom is possible as it expands the realms of intention and trans-dimensional connection through spells that invoke rest, forgiveness, love, and freedom.