November 8, 2022

ADT Announces First Artist Cohort for Next Gen Choreo Lab

Ananya Dance Theatre is excited to announce the first cohort of artists who will participate in ADT and Shawngrām Institutes’ first Next Gen Choreo Lab. Curated by Ananya Chatterjea, Sarah Bellamy, and Anh-Thu Pham. These artists, with the support of national mentors, will develop a choreographic project over the next 7 months.

Alexandra Eady

Alexandra Eady is a contemporary dancer specifically trained in the dance technique of Yorchhā created by Ananya Chatterjea, the Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre. In 2011, she became a company member with Ananya Dance Theatre and continues to train, perform, teach and tour with the company. Eady enjoys movement that is physically challenging and emotionally complex. She is interested in creating and dancing choreographies that require a sustainable intensity, maintain a connection to story and do not leave behind ancestral guidance. She works to bring her communities with her and performs in honor of those that have come before, the ones that are witnessing, and future generations.

Kealoha Ferreira

Kealoha Ferreira, is a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese dance artist from Nuʻuanu, Oʻahu. She began her performing and teaching career with Ananya Dance Theatre in 2013, becoming the Artistic Associate and a Co-Leader of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance & Social Justice in 2018. A practitioner of Yorchhā, and an emerging student of Oli and Hula, Kealoha works at the intersection of these transnational feminist and aloha ʻāina embodied practices to create space, classes, and performance that dig into the tensious and expansive nature of relationality while remaining rooted in cultural and kinesthetic specificity. Sheʻs privileged to have shown work at Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, the Shawngram Institute, Pangea World Theater, Heart of the Beast, Walker Arts Center, and virtually with Theater Mu and Red Eye Theater as a Works in Progress cohort artist. Kealoha is grateful to deepen her learning through opportunities like BIPOC Leadership Circle curated by art Equity and Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, a land and water stewardship program organized by Lonoa Honua. She mahalos the people, lands, and waters (chosen and ancestral) that teach her daily to dance and live in aloha and complex solidarity.

Photo credit: Laichee Yang

Victoria Marie

Victoria is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Santee affiliated, and was born and raised on her ancestral homelands in Mnisota (Minneapolis, MN). She is the owner of Indigenous Lotus which launched in 2017 with the intention to support indigenous relatives in healing through movement practices. As a mother and dedicated student and practitioner, Victoria is a 500-hour certified Yoga Instructor, Yoga of 12-Step Recovery Leader, Primal Flow certified Instructor, and holds a degree in business. Prior to Indigenous Lotus, Victoria’s background includes over a decade of direct youth work within the community for Native American/ Indigenous non-profit organizations in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Her work has led her to teach and speak around the nation and in Canada. Currently, Victoria is enrolled in a second 300-hour yoga certification program with Susanna Barkataki, enrolled in an accredited Ayurvedic Health Counseling program, and a part of an Abortion Doula cohort through the Postpartum Healing Lodge.