October 25, 2021

Ananya Dance Theatre films find domestic & international audiences, awards

Among other activities during the pandemic, Ananya Dance Theatre and collaborating filmmaker Darren Johnson flexed their distribution muscles with four films and gained awards in the process.

While Ananya Dance Theatre takes The O’Shaughnessy stage on Oct. 30 to perform Dastak: I Wish You Me, its short film, Dastak: Fire will be presented at the Greensboro Dance Film Festival in North Carolina, and Ananya Chatterjea’s solo film the blues of my unravelling are laced with the salt of your memory will have its European premiere at the Florence Dance on Screen Festival in Italy.

This is the second time this fall that multiple festival screenings have coincided on the same date. On Sept. 24, Dastak: Fire was presented at both The London International Screen Dance Festival and the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema in Colorado. The Sans Souci Festival also presented the solo short Listening Tree, featuring Chatterjea.

To date, a version of Dastak has been curated into eight film festivals on three continents. It was awarded Best Social Justice Film at the Silk Road Film Awards Cannes in France, and won three awards at the Tagore International Film Festival in Bolpur, India: Outstanding Achievement in a Short Film, Outstanding Achievement in Direction, and Best Editing.

A film adaptation of Ananya Dance Theatre and Tony the Scribe’s 2017 performance Just Breathe has screened at two festivals, was referenced with a photograph in the leading UK financial magazine The Economist, and will screen at the Soho London Independent Film Festival in November.

Two solo films, Listening Tree and the blues of my unraveling are laced with the salt of your memory, choreographed and performed by Chatterjea, will be screened by five prominent dance film festivals. the blues, featuring incantations by Sharon Bridgforth, score by Renée Copeland, and lighting by Mike Grogan, was commissioned by The National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron.

Here is a list of the screenings and awards:

DASTAK: The Film (complete film)

CHAKSU Dance Film Festival, Delhi, India, May 8, 2021

Northrop Auditorium 2021-22 Dance, Music + Film Series, Minneapolis MN, Oct. 8-15, 2021

Tagore International Film Festival, Bolpur, India, Aug. 27. 2021

• Outstanding Achievement in a Short Film

• Outstanding Achievement in Direction

• Best Editing

DASTAK: Fire (3rd Movement)

In/Motion – Chicago’s International Dance Film Festival, Chicago IL, Jan. 23, 2021

Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Boulder CO, Sept. 24, 2021

London International Screen Dance Festival, London UK, Sept. 24, 2021