In this episode of As Grandmother Says, Brinda Guha hosts a conversation with Ananya Chatterjea and Maria Bauman.
In this episode of As Grandmother Says, Brinda Guha hosts a conversation with Ananya Chatterjea and Maria Bauman.
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BRINDA GUHA: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series' journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes, and Series 4 is titled “Dida Bole Je,” or “As Grandmother Says.” Thanks for being here.
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Welcome to “Dida Bole Je, As Grandmother Says” on the How People Move People podcast, a production of the National Center for Choreography Akron. I'm Brinda Guha my pronouns are she and her and I'm a non-disabled cisgendered caste-privileged queer South Asian woman with roots in Bengal and the Jersey Shore. Lenapehoking is the land I occupy today. I make things for a living and I bring together like-minded folks to make things with me.
In this series, choreographers, grief and health workers, musicians, activists and writers will connect with an artist in the same field but of a different generation. They will have conversations with each other, reflecting on stories of their grandmother figures, mentors, and guides. Folks who may or may not have had the most profound impact on us, but who always seem to stand in the glory of their truth. Their hypothesis of what's coming, and their reflection on what was and what could have been. In this shared time, these impactful artists will speak on their processes, their understanding of the times that we're living in, and a moment in their lives when they fundamentally change their mind.
Amar Dida Bole Je. Change your mind, sure, but never change your last name. What are your grandmothers telling you now? These days, I’m really interested in bodies that share space: the dynamics between grieving bodies and galvanized bodies, the possibility to either foster an endless amount of empathy rooted in love and belonging, or the potential to settle into a deep well of apathy while we navigate each other’s rigid edges. Why do we gather bodies in the first place? And what are we really rallying for?
Today, we’ll listen in on a conversation between two powerhouse humans, who every day, embody the revolutionary spirit of meaningful gatherings. Ananya Chatterjea and Maria Bauman are diligent organizers, inventive dance makers, dynamic directors, effective community organizers, and thoughtful facilitators and space-makers, who mother their circles in the most nurturing and honest of ways. I know this because I’ve been facilitated and gathered by both of them in two separate contexts. They both purposefully shift the ground we stand on to reframe our relationship to art making as a practice, and to help clarify the body conversations we intend to have with each other in our dance. Maria says, “The popular notion of the ‘neutral body,’ often described in contemporary dance classes, does not exist in my experience. Rather I create from storied bodies, mythological bodies, bodies-in-creation, and bodies-as-manifestos. My body, and the other bodies I dance with are testaments to survival, mentorship, community care, and defiance.”
Ananya says, “How you fashion your body through your world can be a resistive way – you can change certain formations that are there, you can redesign them. That’s why the relationship between the world into which the body is born, and the world upon which the body will imprint differently, is a very important relationship.”
And with that, welcome to episode with Maria and Ananya.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: I'll just begin by saying, you know, here I am, a brown middle-aged woman with salt and gray hair, salt and pepper hair, aging body, and I am non-disabled and South Asian and caste-privileged and straight. I live in Minishota Makochi, which is the traditional and contemporary homelands of the Dakota communities and also the Anishinaabe communities. I'm feeling my body in a weird way nowadays. The post-menopausal body in dance is a, is a beast. It is something to deal with. And, you know, I think it's a constant meditation to remember as with aging how things slip away and you have to do additional work or different kinds of work to bring yourself or keep yourself in dance because sometimes we get so used to the super technological or super virtuosic I would say notion of dance that we tend to, we tend to opt ourselves out and what a horrible thing to do, but I have to battle that every day. How about you?
MARIA BAUMAN: I knew I was grateful to talk with you, no matter what we talk about, just because I respect you for so much. I've known you and your work for a long time. But this topic that you've brought up is something that I've been writing about more and more. This idea of aging. I'll give a visual description of myself first in case there are any video snippets that are shared from this, but I'm really eager to talk about this with you. I am a Black woman with light brown skin and curly black hair, with some increasing grays. I'm wearing cat eye shaped glasses with a leopard print on the top and a red color on the bottom. And I'm in, actually, not where I live, but I'm upstate a bit. I'm in Pratsville, New York, which is really Lenapehoking. So you mentioned your body and this idea of being, not this idea, this reality, this very tangible material physical experience of dancing after menopause, dancing in a time that is not the most popular, popularly depicted age to dance. And while I know we're not the same age, I am a little bit younger than you, I am so, not although actually because of that, I'm so grateful to talk with you about this because I'm starting to get tastes of that. And I'm looking for where we talk about this? How do I find out about how to do this?
Right now I'm making a dance about not having children through our bodies, mine and other people who are in this work with me. And looking to the earth, it's my first outdoor work. There's something in there for me about mother as first home and I'm aware that the way that the US has had a very exploitative relationship with the earth is the very same kind of exploitative, extractive relationship that, that entity or that project has had with Black and Brown people. And it may not seem related, but it feels related to me because obviously, you know, there's an aging factor in this sort of “aha” that I had where I was like, Oh, I thought I might have children or a child, and I guess I'm not and also different things that are happening in my womb, and statistically to so many Black and Brown people who have uteruses in their body, you know, we're just so disproportionately affected by fibroids and endometriosis and others. And even without that, I'll just say, yeah, my body is changing. And, and on one hand, I'm so grateful to our dancing practice for reminding me and sort of having me meet that with curiosity and always looking at my body and other people's bodies as a marvel, you know, and like a savvy technology. And it's giving me a run for my money. It really is, you know, I, I, it's just different. So I'm grateful that you said it and I would love to talk with you more about it. It was very generous of you to mention it and also real because yeah now that it's happening to me I'm like, Yo we gotta talk about this what do we do how do people do this and I know people came before me and, and obviously dealt with, you know, the changes that we all will face with our bodies. But being in a body-based practice it does feel heightened.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: You know, you talked about role modeling and this is where I think, this is where I think the difficulty is because, you know, literally taken, I didn't, I didn’t meet, I met only one grandparent and I, my grandfather, on my mother's side and he was gone very fast. So I didn't have, you know, literally grandparents, but of course, they're amazing mentors. But I think, I think we are dancing long, but I don't, you know, like when my when my guru's guru would dance, you know, he's this older man dancing, but there was a, you know, he was it was much more about emotional expressivity. So the, so the ways in which we conceptualize dance has become different, you know? So I don't, I feel like there are not enough conversations. So I'm so, I'm so glad that our conversation turned to this. And I'm glad for the question that was there. And here we are, you know, opening conversations that need to be had so that we don't, so that we don’t edit ourselves out of the joy, right?
MARIA BAUMAN: Yes, yes, thank you for naming that. So last time I was in your city, I got to see your spectacular, truly spellbinding on many levels, offering. And the company looks amazing. And you in particular, you always inspire me. You know, I don't know the conditions of your birth as far as star sign or sun sign or anything but Golly, you're like hot lava fire to me. You know, for years, you just dance and it's like, Hoh…wind and fire. Like Huh-huh-huh. And you also bring the water, I feel, with your invitation to grief that I certainly felt in the last work and also the, the color scape, I'll say, of the tapestries that I saw. But for now, I want to focus on your physical body and the dancing. I mean, I remember at the end you were sweaty and you were charged and you felt alive from me. You know, I hugged you after, like I could feel that vibration. And so I admire that. I admire that what I see in you as rigor and vigor that seems authentic that doesn't seem like it's coming from a place of trying to copy youth, you know? I see you very much, I think, embrace your body, yourself, your beauty, you know, the beauty that you have that only you can have at this age. You know what I mean? It's a very specific kind of beauty and I see you really kind of like walk with it. And I just wonder, I guess I wonder what do you think is the engine or some of the engines of that? And the little bit of context for that question is, Okay, we're dancers, we know rigor. And rigor can be such a vital life force, you know, like quickening force, or it can be a tool to beat us down. And sometimes this internalized capitalism or this kind of capitalist self-hate, you know, you're never enough. Women are meant to be chasing, chasing all the time and we can buy something to make us better, you know, a deficit model. And so I just wonder what is there an alchemy of kindness or defiance or do you know like what's the engine that's, that’s wanting you, it seems like really optimizing your performance, but seems like from a healthy or, or grounded place, it looks like from here at least.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Yeah, thank you. I love that question. You know, Maria, I think this, I feel like I love, I love dance. I love dance, I love dancing. I feel it connects me to something so, you know, it connects me to that vibration. I really do long for it. So I feel that I enter it from that love and it inevitably feeds me back. I can't do everything in the way I used to and, you know, when that has, when that began, I used to think, Oh, I used to feel, come on, you have to do it. I would talk to myself and I would be like, you have to get there. And now I feel because of, you know, because of being in contemporary dance as someone who looks like me and sort of always being, sort of you know always having to fight the expectations that I need to look a certain way or dance a certain way, otherwise it's not innovative or experimental. You know, I've had to talk to myself so much that now I talk to myself to say, it's okay. It's not about how long you hold a balance, but how you can flow through it. And I feel like when we enter dance through the door of curiosity of where of the joy it can bring us, I think we, I think we find our power in a different way. And maybe we don't even, and I think most of the time we're not thinking of it as power, but as fullness, you know, like what brings my body to that full joy. That's what it is, you know, finding the fullness of my heart opening. And, you know, and, and I suppose, and I suppose yoga practice brings me that too, because I can't, I can't always, you know, I'm always falling off, falling off in yoga, forever. And you just get up and do it the next day, right? So that teaches, that taught me that though I don't have divine, unearthly balance. You know, I can still do the practice every day and in that tenacity and in the rigor of doing it over and over again, so I know when I can, how I can support myself. That's what's helpful, I think.
MARIA BAUMAN: I appreciate you naming fullness. Yeah, that feels like a honestly, a process maybe rather than a shape, or a destination. I’ll say I feel like I'm sometimes unsure. You know, I'm finding this place. I feel like...I'm moving my hand like, like as if to feel in the dark or, or feel in the dirt for something, but I'm looking for it and I'm finding, you know, rigor has really been my middle name for a long time. I mean, one of my teachers, Mary Ann Soto, I remember in grad school she said, wow, Maria, you love rigor. You love that word. You love it. And I thought, Oh yeah, I guess that's true. That's part of what makes me, feel excited. And these days, I am sometimes unsure whether to push myself, like, Oh, come on, Maria. It's not, you know, it's not over. You, you are really crying for yourself here. Come on, you're 43 years old. It's not that big of a deal. Like, let's get going. Or like, Ooh, Maria, talk kindly to yourself. Well, you know. So anyway, I'll just say I appreciate what you've shared because I'm still, I think, finding it. I'm trying to find, which maybe actually is not age. I think that's something always. Because even with my very young students, I see sometimes, you know, sometimes you need a little fire and there are some students that I wanna say, be nice to yourself. This is actually amazing. Like lighten up, you know. So it's a, it's a finding it feels like, but certainly since I've turned 40, it does feel heightened for me. I'll say.
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BRINDA GUHA: There was something that Ananya Mashi said in the beginning of this conversation with Maria, where she said “When we enter dance through the door of curiosity, of the joy it can bring us, I think we find our power in a different way.” I’m reflecting back on my mother’s back surgery in 2021. As my mother, dance teacher, and a very active person in general, you’d be hard-pressed to tell Malabika Guha what to do in recovery after an invasive surgery that culminated into the insertion of a new metal plate in her lower back after years of pounding the earth with her feet. She was in excruciating pain, and could not move freely for months. We set her up with an area in the downstairs living room so she can recover in peace, without having to use stairs or travel far for her needs. My father and I would take shifts in taking care of her those first few weeks, trying to navigate this time as a family where we carefully supported her body through this big change while also negotiating the autonomy she wanted to so badly to find again. One day when we were chatting after lunch, I asked her how she was feeling emotionally. If you know Ma, you know that she barely can stay in the same place for 5 minutes let alone weeks in the same horizontal position. She said she was so sad because she doesn’t think she could dance anymore after this - not in like a real way. I remembered how she looked when she said that - not necessarily crying or anything, but almost detached from the possibility of joy through movement, as if she was never going to be able to redefine dance for herself. Navigating disability after being in a nondisabled body was something my nondisabled privilege never afforded me the opportunity to consider. I could rub her feet, feed her lunch, watch TV, and take her outside to the garden, but I couldn’t fix this feeling of hopelessness. I meditated on it for a few weeks, and when she was a tad bit mobile, I asked her to dance with me again. She looked at me like I had 3 heads - “How?!” she asked sarcastically, and laughed it off almost immediately. I brought her over to the other room where I set up a chair, and I asked her to go over some of the rhythmic and poetic bols, or compositions, she taught me when I was younger. She danced from the waist up, using abhinaya, or facial expressions, and her upper body, and I danced with my full body behind her. I filmed our little duets that afternoon, and I shared it online with friends and followers. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a response to anything I’ve ever posted. Ma danced with more energy than I did, and people were moved to see us dancing together. We started doing that exercise weekly, and each time, another piece of her spirit opened back up again to the possibility of entering dance through the lens of joy first. A year later, she returned to the stage in a new rendition of the Tagorean dance drama entitled Chandalika, playing the loyal and stubborn mother of her heart-wrenched young daughter, which I portrayed. Looking back at this process, I’m realizing that the vigor and stamina and softness of dance with which Maria and Ananya Mashi discussed being necessary, can be accessed in multiple ways. Although it shouldn’t have taken me this long to truly notice, but ever since this experience, I’ve studied the incredible disabled dance makers in our field who have been creating innovative and beautiful works of art with their disability as the central aesthetic to their works, highlighting the various entry points to artistry, and challenging nondisabled bodies everywhere to reconsider where vigor and stamina and softness can be applied, and leverage our power to fight the systems that limit the access to resources that disabled dancers have always deserved. As difficult as these last few years have been for my mother’s health, I now know that we learned a valuable lesson as a dance family: that curiosity can be the path to possibility, and joy can be the aesthetic. Back to the conversation.
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ANANYA CHATTERJEA: So of course we have all these things that are, you know, emerging from internal conversations as well. But what about the times we're living in? What does that do to your body? Someone set themselves on fire in front of the courthouse today. Like this is the second time we've seen this. What is going on?
MARIA BAUMAN: (exhale of breath) Yes. The times we're living in and…what I'm finding in my body is that, well, I'll say this, something that I really appreciate about community organizing work and my undoing racism work is that it has humanity in such high esteem. That the idea of being human and humane really is what we're always trying to, tap into more of, you know, rather than, let's say capitalist money, you're trying to tap into more currency or a fame or professionalism model, we're trying to tap into more respectability. I really appreciate that in community organizing, we and I am trying to remember how human I am. And I will say that all of this war and racism and raping of the planet and so many, they have for me a callousing effect, a numbing effect that I am very grateful to other practices for helping me feel. Like, Ooh, I feel myself becoming more numb. I was starting to feel that way about this attack, sustained attack on people in Gaza. We know it's actually not new, but it is certainly heightened now. And I realized, you know, at the beginning I was, Whoa, yeah, how could, you know, let me call my state reps. Let me call. And then I started to feel this tiredness, this exhaustion that I remember from when Trump came into office. I, I similarly felt like, Ooh, my stamina is being challenged here. And so again, I'm grateful for those organizing practices and I'm grateful for dancing because I think those make me a little more sensitive to when I'm becoming numb. And something that I've actually instated for myself because of the aging body that we were talking about for many things, because of not having children. In other words, for particularities in my life, but also because of the larger global realities, I've actually started having a weekly day of mourning. It's usually on Sundays, unless I have some show or something, and then I'll try to schedule it another day. But as much as I can, I try to be by myself that day. And write and do my puzzle, like do kind of quiet activities, little art projects. And inevitably I just think about the slights of the week, the times that I felt vulnerable, the times I felt scared, angry, etc. And it feels so small in some, in some way like, oh, that's just about me. But it does bring my tears. And what I found is that really makes space. And then I go, Oh my God, what the hell is happening to people in Gaza? Let me get on that Jewish Voices for Peace call again. You know, I'm finding that it just makes a little bit more space and it's like de-thawing me because I don't know how people are doing. It's, I do feel the callousing that happens and that's the thing that I'm afraid of and that I don't want to become is inhuman or inhumane. And again, you are a fiery diva. I mean, to me, you seem to have such a high capacity and a stamina for prolonged looking, which is what I think these times call for. So I'm curious what feeds that for you? Or how are you sustaining your ability to kind of breathe out as well as breathe in?
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Yeah, you know, Maria, I, I like you feel the exhaustion nowadays because it's just unabated. The violence is constant. And you know, you have to choose some moments when you push, but I feel maybe aging has reminded me I have less time in this world. So I can't stop. I gotta keep going. Because what is, what is the next, what am I going to answer to the next generation?
Oh, this is what you left us? Like, I don't want to face them, you know, on another side of the border. I don't want to face them. And they said, did you, did you fight with your last breath? That's what I, you know, have to remind myself. But exhaustion is definitely something important. And if I hear about the next generation's feeling more hopeless, I read about that, you know, everywhere in the world as a sense of, you know, the, the sort of new, the younger communities feel that we've screwed up the world for them. And, you know, how to take, how to, how to listen to that has been the biggest teacher lately. So, you know, I, I feel like that's why I think teaching is a hard thing, but teaching is, teaching is what is helping me stay connected to that.
MARIA BAUMAN: Hmm. I appreciate you naming listening. I think that's something…it's a practice that does feel like it's getting stronger with age, for me. And listening internally, listening out, listening to what's not being said, listening to what's being said and taking more time to absorb. I think I used to be in, and I'm still recovering, but I used to be in such, I think, a capitalist model of like, listen to quickly output, output, output all the time. And I'm just finding the need for more time to absorb and digest and compost and grieve. I guess there just is a point where I feel like, you know what, I really am human. There's only so much of this I can take. I'm not a superhuman, you know? So anyway, I, I appreciate hearing you say listen, because I'm, it's hard. My day of mourning, my weekly day of mourning that I mentioned is hard for me, honestly, because it's like, just be with yourself. Just be quiet Maria and there are a lot of feelings that come up but I am finding that otherwise all the news just becomes a wash, it just becomes a mélange and a tidal wave of like…it all feels the same you know if I don't stop to really absorb it just feels like, Oh everything is everything.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Does this day of mourning actually help you sharpen your creative practices too when you get to working with groups of people?
MARIA BAUMAN: It does. In fact, I started it as an offering that they didn't necessarily know about nor ask for, but to the people I'm working with on this piece that I'm making called These Are the Bodies That Have Not Born. Because I've invited Black and Brown people, mostly queer, some trans folks in the mix, to be dealing with this incredibly tender, in some cases delicate topic of reckoning with not having children through our bodies. I'm approaching this work differently in some ways than other works that I've made and it's very much a ritual as well as it will become a performance. And a performance of course is a kind of ritual, but I think the ritual aspect is even more heightened. But to your question, I feel like I'm really bringing people, I'm inviting, I actually am not bringing anyone anywhere, but I'm inviting the collaborators to really get involved with their internal landscape with their feelings, with their bodies, with their experiences, not always but likely with their griefs. And I feel a huge responsibility in that. And I thought, Hmm, I mean, not just thought, I felt, you know, as any artwork, there's been a lot that's gone into this, but one idea that really came to me was, I need to make sure that I am doing my own ritual parallel and underground to this one so that I can show up and hold the space.
And to be honest, the piece began with my doing my own ritual. I was really just in a lot of pain around not having children. And I was just thinking, okay, I got to figure this out. You know, what are some, what's some grieving that I can do? What's you know, what's the reckoning? Or do I give it one last try? Am I going to try to do something with my egg? You know, I just was like, I got to figure this out. And in any case, that put me on this whole path by myself and then eventually revealed to me that there's an artwork here to invite other people into. But once I invited people, I realized I needed to even heighten. So there are some other rituals that I do, but the day of mourning has actually come from that. It feels like, Hmm, I need to have some tasks that I do just for me in order to be able to show up in any studio or outdoor space and facilitate an artistic process for these folks. And what I find is that, Whoo (exhales), it's having me be so much more tender with myself. And I find that I'm, I don't want to say remothering because I have been mothered, but I'm adding to the mothering. I'm mothering myself some more. And I am finding that that gives me a lot more space of compassion, of listening, of being a little bit, an nth like some of the mentors that I really look up to. When I'm with these people who are absolutely divine and are trusting me and are wanting to be in this artwork. I love this thing that we don't talk about very much, I don't think. So in any event, I'll say that the day of mourning, I find actually makes some of the joy sweeter because it's so sad. And then, Monday morning, I see a sunrise or a bird and I'm like, Whoa, Oh my God, thank God for that. And it is giving me more space, I think, to feel other people because I've taken some time to feel what's going on with me.
There are so many griefs these days. I mean, there just truly are. And I know you to be a person who looks at those squarely in the face. And I'm wondering if you have particular joy practices or soothing practices or caring practices or nurturing ones that you feel like add to your capacity to be with what is not right, what is, what is to be mourned.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Yeah you know. Yeah I used to, you know, I’m, I used to be very bad at meditation because of my air-fire mix in my, in my conditions of my birth. I wanted to always keep going and I feel like having to still the mind and wash it with water a little bit, you know, in that kind of quiet sitting was difficult. But I have to say my biggest joy practice is really dance when I'm not, you know, yeah, it's my biggest joy practice. I'll just say dancing for, you know, no reason on earth and not, you know, not technical dancing. By that, I mean, I'm not where I'm not doing okay. And I hold a balance and go to this, Oh, no, just grooving to the music. That feels very joyful to me. Um, you know, I love doing that. And I that's what reminds me that, yeah, when I, when I'm still able to find the nuanced, nuanced subdivisions of time and space inside my body that makes me really happy because it makes me think okay, so my imagination is still active. My imagination is still going, you know. Like how, um, how can you conjure change if your imagination, when, you know, that quicksilver quality of the imagination, which I love so much, you know, which is what we do all the time we imagine new worlds, right? Like how can that act, the act the vibration and the act acting-ness of that? I don't know how else to put it in English, in English suppose. The, the yeah, the imagination, the goingness of the imagination is what keeps me so excited, you know? Yeah. Those are my joy practices, I'll say.
MARIA BAUMAN: I love it. Well, I'm wondering because I know you work with a powerhouse group of femmes of all kinds and (exclaims) yeah, there's clearly, there's something that you know about transmission or shared vibration or communing. And I wonder would you mind sharing what ways you foster that kind of, I'm thinking of like voracious, something that wants to eat, the big appetite of your imagination, your curiosity, and particularly physical curiosity. I'm wondering how you've come to, to nurture that with at this point, generations of your company and waves and waves and waves of students? I mean, at this point, it's not a fluke, it's not that. These ones are your friends and y'all just have a bond. I mean, you clearly have a vibration of transmission. And so I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about that.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: I learned about, you know, this notion of, you know, how bell hooks and Cornel West will talk about love. As love being, love being, you know, seeing the world from the perspective of the most oppressed and of love which takes you outside. I feel that learning how, like my biggest joy is dancing with others. I'm not a solo practitioner, you know, I love like, Hey, okay, what are you doing? Let me dance with you here. Let me see if I can intertwine my arm here. Can our hips move together? What does it look like when I slip out from right behind you? I find that so joyful that those moments, you know, there's those intimate moments where you dance with others. So I feel like, you know, loving the difference and seeing how we do the same step together differently, is so joyful that I think that to me, I feel like that's the moment, that’s the moment of sharing the vision and not being how to be precise without being academic about it, right? That's the joy, that’s the joy of teaching and interpretation. So once they start to find the joy in it themselves, they're gonna shape it, you know, they're going to find more and more depth and nuance inside it. That's what's exciting to me. And how about you?!
MARIA BAUMAN: Well, you spoke on it: Love. I mean, First of all, I'm really lucky to have incredible, incredible examples and mentors. Two of them being my grandmothers, you know, Brinda talked about, about grandparents and both of my grandmothers particularly. I am lucky to have known all of my grandparents and I could, I could talk separately about my grandfathers and their gifts. But right now I'll say my grandmothers. Both have offered me at different times an ocean of love to be within. More than I think a parent can, or you know, there's a certain kind of separation but closeness with a grandmother, at least that I've experienced and I'm grateful for. And then you add people like, you know, people who are my mentors and your friends, Jawole Zollar and Sharon Bridgforth. And these people, I think are really like amazing weavers of energy between people. And what I see in them and what I feel and experience is a deep, again, listening and appreciation for how other people show up and an interest. Not appreciation like, Oh, now I need to go be like that. But I see Jawole and Sharon being genuinely intrigued, being genuinely interested in how other people show up. And I think because I've had so long with Jawole, I've also learned from her, something I look up to her in, is a capacity for people to what she calls mess up the nest. I remember what she was telling me about, you know, her own experience. And Jawole will correct this if I get it wrong, you know, I invite that. But as I remember it, she was talking about you know, people leave the company. And, and Urban Bush Women has been around for so long at this point, thank God, that there have been lots of sort of classes or waves of people. And she said, you know, people leave. That's something you have to kind of get used to and make peace with. And she talked about how some people, in order to be able to make peace with it themselves, have to mess up the nest before they leave. Like they have to go, Ugh, I can't stay here anymore. You know, blah, create chaos. And watching her ability to kind of zoom out and see that and sure, deal with it here and there if it gets so messy, it needs something. But mostly be able to just kind of look at it and go, Okay, I accept. But what I see is that years later, people that I'm thinking, Oh, they'll never talk again. Years later, Jawole's going, Oh, Maria, I had lunch with someone that we had such a good talk and da-da-da. I'm like, What? (Chatterjea laughs) So, I really admire that and I think I also have a deep love. I mean, I just have to say I really do, I think have a lot of love and empathy. I feel a lot of energetic information from people and I'm interested. You know, I, I really do care about folks. And maybe because I'm an only child, I wanna be with people. You know, I don't, my mom and I grew up really kind of together, you know, single parent, only child. And so this idea of intimacy and vulnerability, that feels like the bread and butter, you know, that feels like a warm blanket, like, yeah, let's be together, you know, that was my mom and I'm like, yeah, we're together. So I have to say that's the crux, that's the question for a lot of my work with MBDance is, how do we be together better? How do we be together better? And that's really my endeavor in the world. So I just keep apprenticing myself with people and practices that can teach me how to be with better.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Yeah. Oh my goodness. I love that. I have to say, because, and now you're making me reflect on myself, because is that why I love, you know. You know, I was single parent for a very long time and I also did grow up with my daughter. She would say I'm still growing up with her. She's probably bringing me up for sure. You know? I wonder that's why I, you know, like. You know, the moment I got to Minnesota, I was like, Oh my God, dance together with me people. Oh my God, I'm, I don't know anyone here. You know, it's so non-Brown and it's like, you know, I got to find my people. You know, the company was born of that, but I want to say of the teaching of love because you've brought Jawole and Sharon into the room, my dear, dear people, but also I want to bring my mentor into the room, you know, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, who, you know was first my, was first my, graduate graduate advisor, but then adopted me as her daughter, as she calls me, D-A-W-T-A-H. And Brenda Mom was in the, became, taught me how to create these transnational family lines. And I've continued that. So I have the daughter that I did give birth to, but I have many more children, you know, who I love and have brought up in my own way. And I love them. These transnational families also keep me going through these times, you know? Like our mentors have taught us, taught us lessons without teaching us do this, you know?
MARIA BAUMAN: And I think that's a part of aging that I'm finding now is that I'm not the baby anymore. I mean, when I first joined Urban Bush Women, I was the youngest member of the company. For so long, a big part of my identity was being this baby in the Bush, but youngest, la-la-la. And I'm not, you know, in any setting, that one or, or, or other settings. And I think that's a beautiful thing that, you know, one of my other dear friends and mentors,Amara Tabor-Smithreminded me, right? That's my sister for life, my friend, but also mentor. You know, she said, Oh, what a, what a gift it is to age. What a, what a, literally, what a divine opportunity. So many people don't get to do that. And we weren't talking about me at that point. I forget what we were talking about, but, and this was years ago. But it really struck me because my father is an ancestor. And I'm older than he lived on this planet. And so I thought, Oh my God, it just really struck me when Amara said that. And I thought, damn, that's true. And so nowadays, this idea of our mentors taught us without teaching, you know, without being pedantic, I don't want to overstep. I'm not saying that I'm anyone's mentor per se, but I will say that it gives me something to emulate. I think kind of like you're talking about the next generation, I think, may I be worthy, you know, because so many people have done that for me. So, we've talked a lot about change. Our bodies changing, this world changing, and how we contend with it. And so I wonder if you would talk about a time when that happened for you? Where you had a shift or a change of heart based on some more information or based on something that you felt.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: I'm Bengali and Bengalis love to eat. I love to eat, I love food. And, you know, I, I at some point in my life, I, I felt better eating vegetarian food. You know, rice, dal or lentils and vegetables. I love, I love that. And I know that there are environmental benefits to eating in that way. And it's good for my body as well. But then, you know, when this thing, this fascist government happened in India and Muslims started being persecuted for eating beef, I, it had to be a political point for me to change, especially when I'm in India, I make sure that I eat, that I eat in a particular way. I eat meat, which is also very Bengali by the way. Bengalis eat meat and fish a lot. But I want to make sure that I eat meat as a way to signal a certain kind of politics. I didn't used to believe that. I used to think I need to eat just for my body's sake. And I'm not 100% you know on that, but allowing myself shifting ground based on where I'm at is about upholding a certain politics of signaling where I stand. But on the other hand, in my artistic practice, I'll offer a quick question, you know, and I suppose this is how I learned, this is how I learned to be softer. So one time, you know, just before my performance, I have this, you know, premiering this new piece, and there's something that's happening in the lobby outside, interacting with audiences. And this older gentleman, I'm, I’m just about to ready to start. And this older gentleman comes up to me, older white gentleman comes up to me and says, Well, my daughter has brought me to this thing. And I, you know, I don't know what this thing is. And I don't know what this art for social justice is, but I mean, well, I'm here, I suppose I'll see. And, you know, I thought to myself, what can I do? Because the movement needs a huge number of us. The movement needs as many people as will come on the movement towards justice. So how do I, how do I invite someone who is ready to dismiss me, how do I invite that person in despite his readiness to dismiss, you know? (Bauman clears throat) How do I find generosity? And that really clued me in deeper into craft. Like how I can only dance from a place of generosity. And then my, my sibling, my dearest sibling, Tommy DeFrantz said, we can only dance from, you know, we can only dance ourselves. We can only dance from a place of light. He told me that many years ago. And I was like, that's right. So, you know, not allowing myself to be small, you know, like my first reaction was like, you know, all fire, Okay, whatever, I'm gonna talk to this person. And maybe I don't need to do that. Maybe I just need to be like, All right, all right, you go sit in your seat and I will still invite you in. I think it's been a hard lesson to learn, but that's, you know, I suppose that's a change of, change of reaction, reaction, how I react to things.
(Music begins)
BRINDA GUHA:When I think about accessing what my grandmothers would say when being called to bring someone into the conversation vs shaming them out of it, I think about the time I brought my dance company to a festival in Queens where we were asked to participate in a Q&A after our excerpt of an original work I created in our signature contemporary Indian style of movement. This elder gentleman got on the mic and said, “You know - you just spoke a lot about the hybrid ideas in your movement style, but all I see is a hodgepodge of moves that have nothing to do with Indian dance. I think if you want to just be a fusion choreographer, just say that. But to say that anything you did was ‘Indian dance’ - well, I didn’t understand or see it.” Okay. There’s a lot to unpack there. First I felt my paternal grandmother Bani Guha, her instantaneous annoyance at the comment. Sorry to say this, but she couldn’t stand unintelligent people who positioned themselves as having an intelligent thought in public. Then I felt my maternal grandmother, Anjali Roychowdhury, settle into my bones slowly. She’d probably not say anything for a moment and just smile softly while formulating some smart response. That internal spike of rage was the catalyst to the softness that immediately settled into my body. Dida ki bolto amake? What would she have said to me in that moment? I decided that being defensive was not the move in this setting, and that if the observation was about movement, then the response should be movement too. I proceeded to break down a simple phrase in the finale section of our excerpt, and narrate the different vocabularies that colored that moment.
At the same time I wanted to explain, for example, for example, if you have your ending pose right, our ending section of the group dance, right? Da -da -da -da. We're here, right? This is a full Tandav Manipuri position. Da -da -da -da. I turn and I da-da-da-da-da, into Kathak arms, look, I drop into folk, into folk, and kick, and mudra, mudra, round, and up, push, pull it down, ta-ta-ta-ra, Bharatanatyam step, boom, and Manipuri step, and pull out, maybe different mood. Cross, then I turn Kathak up, folk, folk, folk, Kathak up, folk, folk, folk, contemporary. You know what I mean? Woo! [audience applause].
To be honest, although the response to that moment was inspired, the feeling I walked away with was actually sadness. Why did that elder call me out like that? What purpose did it serve? That feeling of discomfort and having to search for something respectful and informative to say was not how I mapped out that evening. But that was it: nothing really follows the map you create for yourself. What prepares you for these moments is the practice of knowing what you do and why you do it. That practice is our work. I never knew how many grandmothers actually felt in a moment of confrontation like that, because they both kept those truths to themselves and carried on in ways that served them later. I suppose I didn’t know how to feel that day either, and maybe that’s okay.
(Music interlude continues)
MARIA BAUMAN: I feel a little trepidacious sharing this one, but I will. So I grew up in the US South, and the part of my family I was around most at that time were Catholics. And so for that reason, I really didn't give it a lot of thought, to an extent, but when I was much younger, I thought of myself as pro-life when it came to the topic of abortion. And when I say I didn't give it much thought, the thought that I did give it was from the perspective of hearing family members talk about what their religion said about the topic. And I thought for myself, well, wow, I could never personally make that choice so I, so I thought at the time or so I felt. And so it just, and I, I also felt, well, I'm anti-death penalty and it, it followed for me. And this is like, I was a teenager. And even in my early twenties. And I look back on that honestly, sort of with incredulity, like, wow, Maria, that's really what you thought. But if I'm honest, it really is, it really is. That's how I was raised to a certain extent. What's interesting is that I'm not so sure my mom believed that, but anyway other influential family members in my life did, and I really adopted it. And I didn't, you know, I, I, I wasn't gung-ho about it. I wasn't going out to tell anybody else that or anything like that. But I did personally feel like, okay, I'm pro-life. And what changed that for me was people that I respected. You know, it wasn't anybody sat down with me and said, Maria, come on. But I just would listen. And as I heard people talking about that topic, whenever it would come up, and people particularly that I respected it would just be as a matter of conversation. I just noticed that they were pro-choice. And that didn't necessarily make me change my mind, but it did make me become more curious and want to investigate a little bit more on my own because I thought, Huh, why do they, how did they, why do they think that or how do they…? And eventually, of course, you know, I, I came around to a different way of thinking and, and really feeling like a choice that you would make for your own body, Maria, has nothing to do with other people's choices for their bodies. And isn't that precisely the point that you get to decide what's going to happen in your own body. And not to mention, of course, going deeper into my study and, and understanding of patriarchy here. And I think that's why I said I felt trepidacious because at this point for me, my instinct is to want to distance myself from that teenage Maria who thought, Oh, how could anyone ever have an abortion? I mean, I, I, I honestly feel silly saying those words, but I really appreciate this idea that there's hope in us not being so staunch. There's hope in us being able to change. And as I just listen to people, whom I respected. And again, it was never anybody saying, What? that's what you believe Maria? Let me debate you today. Because I'm a good debater. I mean, you know, we could have gone in circles and, but I think it goes back at least for me to this idea of living one's life as a choreography, so that you fashioned it in such a way that people care or notice what you think or how you move, because there were people who I cared about deeply, who thought very deeply from me, and they didn't say it to me directly, but that in and of itself made me more porous and more curious.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Maria, that was such a beautiful story. I just, I'm so moved. I…
MARIA BAUMAN: I feel embarrassed that I ever was pro-life but…
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: No. I think that, you know. I mean listen if we all when back to youth we would all have embarrassments because the systems we were brought up with were so faulty. You know?
MARIA BAUMAN: Hmm. So we were invited to talk about a time when we hear our ancestors or when we don't. And Hmm. I'm really grateful to be visited by ancestors in my dreams, sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes. And then I also have an ancestor who [pause] talks through technology, honestly. Sometimes my phone will just say, googly, googly like my text message will just start saying letters, letters that I'm not pressing. And I'm like, Okay, Beebo's playing in the phone. And I just say, shout out to Beebo. And I'm so grateful. I feel like what he's offering is comfort and also partnership and bravery as I'm doing my artwork, which is wonderful because I didn't know him as an artist when he was alive. But I'm so grateful to feel him smiling at me and my work kindly from beyond the veil. I have another ancestor who, you know, I don't know her name, but she visited me in a dream and I remember her. I, I, I won't say all of how she looked because I just wanna keep that, it feels sacred the way that she showed up and how she showed herself. And I think I wanna honor her by not putting that all out there. But I will say one of the things that she asked me, she looked a very particular way and she asked me without talking, but I got the impression she asked me, “how many hearts do I have so far?” And I didn't think about this. We were talking about love earlier. And I remember saying somehow, like, I think I have three. And she seemed to be just like, it was just a check-in. She was like, Okay. And it seemed, the impression I got was, warm feeling, you know, it didn't feel like she didn't approve. It was approval, but I also, I remember distinctly feeling the impression that there were more to, more hearts to have. Yeah, but it seems like there's something about building capacity for listening and growing all of my hearts and intuiting and feeling which hearts remain covered and how to reveal them. So grateful for that. What about you? How do you hear from your ancestors or, or when do you or not?
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: Brenda Dixon Gottschild once said to me, you know, she was teaching us about ethnographic practice. And she said, you know, don't go looking for something, but when you're open to something, it will show itself. And I feel the, it's how I sense the denseness of the air that I, you know, like presence is very real. And someone also once told me that if you thought of your parents every once in a while, while they were alive, once they transition, you will, there will never be a day you don't think of them. And that is so true. And I talk to my mother and my father all the time. And I feel just in being able to talk to them from that place of 100% Uhh…I can't figure out what to do, Ma. You know, just being able to say that, it's just that deep vulnerability and, you know, humility that you can show up with to your parents because that love is unwavering, non-negotiable, always there, is always going to be there. I feel gratitude for that. And I will tell you a quick story.
You know, one time this was a piece with Laur and I was doing Histories of Gold, how histories of gold and, had become a way to torture, particularly femmes and global minorities, in global, global communities of color. And then, you know, there used to be this one woman who was a movie star when I was young. And she had, she had suddenly, she had died. The newspaper report was that she had died because she was cooking late night, she was cooking something and her sari caught on fire, which is how so much, so much South Asian, you know, death will happen because a sari, the part that is hanging will catch fire or something like that. But I had not thought of her, you know, she was a beautiful film star, great, finished over, you know, she died very young when she died. And there was conversation about her, something with her partner, you know, something that it was not really a quote unquote accident as was proposed, but something had happened to her. And that her partner had done, her husband had done something to her, about money or some money she or something. So now mind you, Laura and I are creating this piece and I'm talking about the way in which South Asian women have died in such horrible and violent ways. You know, over things like money, you know? And I had this solo that I used that was called Flames on Silk. And Laur and I, I would, Laurie Carlos and I would do that. You know, I would do the solo and Laurie would come on piece at moments. And then at this moment, there's one moment I would go into this big balance, you know, like sort of, you know, and then sure as hell, this actor was standing right there. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I second, and it happened every four days of the performance. And, you know, like, I don't know, you know, I was meant, whether I was just meant to remember that, remember that people who are not, you know, sort of bloodline ancestors are still our ancestors. And I feel like, often I feel, I do feel haunted by femmes who have transitioned perhaps, you know, and maybe because I, I, I research so much of my work is sort of comes from that place of that mourning and that moving loss, moving through loss, you know, I feel like sometimes I see people who will show themselves to me in, you know, I don't remember dreams, but some images will suddenly come to me at that moment. But I'll talk about one quick story about somebody who recently became an ancestor. So my canine family member, Rajrudra Doshu you know? Prince Sunshine the Bandit. So, you know, he, he taught me, he redefined capitalism for me because I feel like people talk about their animal family members as owners. And I learned from him that he's a family member. You know, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs start talking, teaching us about, you know, trans species love, right? In how she writes Undrowned with, about marine mammals. And I learned that from Raj and you know, he's, he’s an ancestor now. And I just reflect back on how he would be so, you know, his hands were, as I was trying to finish this book, his hands were on my lap and I would be like, Okay, okay I'm going, I promise you I'll go for a walk as soon as I finish this manuscript. But time, he taught me so much about time. And, you know, I wish I had internalized that lesson more when he was still here, but he's still teaching me. So I love him. I love you, Raj.
(Music begins)
BRINDA GUHA: That was nourishing. By two people who really know how to build the container for others to be nourished as well. Maybe their grandmothers are speaking through them now.
MARIA BAUMAN: Amar Dida Bole Je, your body needs rest.
ANANYA CHATTERJEA: আমিআমারদাদীরসাথেদেখাকরতেপারিনি, কিন্তুআমারমেয়েবলে Ma, take care of your mental health. I said that I didn't meet, get to meet my grandmother. But my daughter says, Ma, take care of your mental health.
(Music continues)
BRINDA GUHA: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center of Choreography at The University of Akron, or NCC Akron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, Associate production by Lisa Niedermeyer, and editing by James Sleeman. How People Move People theme music by Ellis Rovin, and “As Grandmother Says” theme music by Roopa Mahadevan. Transcription is by Arushi Singh, and cover art is by Micah Kraus. A profound thanks to this episode’s incredible duo, Maria Bowman and Ananya Chatterjea, for their generosity of spirit in this conversation. To be invited into their world of music and culture, and to meet their queen grandmother figures is so important to me, and I hope for everybody who experiences Episode 2. Gratitude to Anjali Roychowdhury and Bani Guha, my grandmothers. And a huge thank you to the cohort of creatives I brought together that held me accountable in this curatorial vision, including: Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Farah Yasmeen Shaikh, Barkha Patel, Sydnie Mosley, Stacie Webster, Candace Thompson-Zachery and Christy Bolingbroke. Special thanks to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCC Akron programming. To learn more about NCC Akron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @nccakron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for How People Move People.Dida Bole, free every person in the world fighting their oppressors, and listening closely for their grandmothers, too.