Artist in Residence Program — Soham Dance Space

Soham Dance Space celebrates our inaugural Artist-in-Residence Parijat Desai.

Soham Dance Space is honored to partner with Parijat Desai as we pilot an Artist-in-Residence program that uplifts, complicates, and reframes South Asian dance in the diaspora.

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for example, undermines the artist, limits the potential for transformative connections with audiences, and reinforces outdated and often harmful conceptual boxes.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.
Residency activities are co-produced by Parijat Desai and Soham Dance Space.
Public Events:
August 30th:
Transform | Affirm Kick-Off Convening
September 10th, 17th & 18th:
“Dance In The Round” at Night Out in the Parks 10th Anniversary Season
Closed Events:
September 11th:
Workshop with Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR)
September 21st:
Circle Summit
click for more information
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

Transform | Affirm Kick-Off Convening

Join us on Tuesday, August 30th, 5pm PT / 7pm CT, for chance to reflect on the broader need for artist-centered programs that actually affirm and hold space for the complexities within our work and identities. Soham’s AiR pilot is one experiment in an ongoing and widespread endeavor by artists of the global majority to be seen and heard on their own terms. Considering perspectives from marginalized practitioners who push outside narrow canons, panelists share: 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.

Click here to register

Dr. Meiver De la Cruz (she/they) is a scholar, artist, and activist, and has served as faculty at numerous colleges including Oberlin, UIC, Smith, and Scripps, teaching dance studies, queer, feminist and performance theory, critical theory, intersectional justice, feminist ethnographic methods, and dance technique. Currently, she is Visiting Faculty in Gender Studies and Anthropology at Whitman College. She writes about diasporic movement practices as well as performance epistemologies in a global context, and her expertise. She holds a Master’s Degrees from Simmons College in Gender and Cultural Studies, and from Northwestern in Performance Studies, and a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. As an artist, she creates works addressing the intersections of diaspora politics, class, transnational racialization schemas, and gendered sexual violence. She has toured internationally with several dance companies and performs with dance, theater ensembles (in both English and Spanish), and makes work as a solo artist. 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, and (dis)content creator rooted equally in history and fantasy, form and groove, esoterica and common sense. A graduate of Columbia University, Nadia currently performs with Jonah Bokaer and Gotham Dance Theater, and recently completed artist residencies with Chez Bushwick and Leimay Foundation. They have co-directed videos for the artists Zahed Sultan and Alethea, and presented work through Dixon Place, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Queens College Arts Festival, Queensboro Dance Festival, Screendance Miami, YallaPunk, New York Arab Festival, and Little Island NYC, among other venues. Nadia has been part of Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee, cultural consultant for National Queer Theater’s 2020 Criminal Queerness Festival, and guest curator for Salon al Mahjar, a SWANA artist gathering. Nadia is also a staff writer for ThinkingDance and a teaching artist in public schools throughout 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 living on Tongva-Kizh land. Meena creates experimental non-linear narratives at the intersection of live performance, video art installation, and social issues. Grappling with the practises of collage, projection mapping, contemplative documentary, improvisation, somatic bodywork and bharatanatyam, Meena centers an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, melanin-rich creative liberatory practice. They are directing a multimedia series entitled KARUPPU (meaning BLACK in Tamil) about African-Dravidian connections, casteism, colorism, and trance/possession movement rituals. Meena is a current founding member of two collectives: SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists, Mellon awardee 2021-2022) and SiriusShapeShifters (with d. Sabela grimes). Recently, Meena has presented their films or video projection design work at The Getty Museum, The Getty Villa, Underground Museum, The Broad Museum, MOCA LA, Jacob's Pillow, SOPHIENSALE, 651 Arts, EMPAC, BLACKSTAR, etc. http://meenamurugesan.com/

Bhumi B. Patel (she/they) is a queer, desi artist/activist, choreographer, dance writer/scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel pursues liberation through dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, and writing/scholarship. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi is currently a doctoral student at The Ohio State University. She is a member of Dancing Around Race, and engages with curatorial practices for both performances and written publications. She has presented her research at the Dance Studies Association Annual conference and the Popular Culture Association Annual conference as well as having been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Life as a Modern Dancer, Contact Quarterly, and InDance. Bhumi is based on the ancestral lands and territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. www.pateldanceworks.org

Dance In The Round

In partnership with Night Out in the Parks 10th Anniversary season, join us for one of three free workshops that 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.

Indian Boundary Park, September 10th, 2pm
Washington Park, September 17th, 5:30pm
Julia de Burgos Park, September 18th, 5:30pm

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

Collaborative Artists

Timothy “Solomon” Bowser, hails from the red clay hills of Stone Mountain, Ga. Bowser received his formative dance training from Zandra Taylor, Dean Williams and Pamela Jones Malave. Bowser received his BA at Columbia College Chicago in 2013. Bowser has performed with Winifred Haun and Dancers, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, The Seldoms, Kanopy Dance Company, Motion Pictures Project and Kalapriya Center for Indian Performing Arts. Bowser has also collaborated with a roster of independent artists & visionaries including J'Sun Howard, Dedrick Banks, Damon Green, Jared Brown, Winifred Haun, Talia Koylass, Carson Reiners, and Jasmin Taylor. Bowser performed for Chance The Rapper for the release of his 2016 "Coloring Book" mixtape launch. In 2017, Bowser received an Intensive Co-Mission Residency at the arts incubator, Links Hall. In 2018, Bowser created and premiered MATTER for Winifred Haun & Dancers. Currently, Bowser serves as Lab Assistant for the performance research lab Slippage at Northwestern University under the leadership of Dr. Thomas De Frantz. Bowser seeks to perform/create work that investigates and honors the spirit that ties one life to another.

Silvita Diaz Brown 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, Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Silvita uses her art to explore the self, to celebrate her Mexican heritage and to awaken insights about female strength. Her goal is 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.

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, 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.

Darling Shear is a Chicago Native with Atlanta roots where Darling started dance training in Ballet, Modern, Jazz and African. Darling began dancing professionally right out of high school; highlights include working with Bubba Carr, Cher’s choreographer/artistic director, Rhonda Henriksen, Twyla Tharp, Tracy Vogt, Hinton Battle, and Lauri Stallings. Darling moved back to Chicago in 2011 to start Suna Dance.
As a freelance dancer/choreographer, Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys, Body Cartography, Links Hall, Victoria Bradford, Chicago AIDS Foundation, Chances Dances, No Small Plan Productions, Slo’Mo, the Public Hotel, Soho House Chicago, Growing Power Inc., EXPO Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, SAIC, Depaul Art Museum, UChicago, UIC, MCA, Chicago Film Archive, Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, Salonathon, and Open TV. Darling is on the cover and quoted in Micah Salkind's Do You Remember house? Chicago's Queer of Color Undergrounds (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Darling was acknowledged as 1 of 8 Trans/GNC dancers to follow in 2020. Awards include: Between Gestures scholarship to Impulstanz (Vienna, Austria), Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, CDF 10X10 Choreographer, Links Hall CoMission Fellowship, and 3Arts nominations (2019, 2022). Darling's career has been one with a strong spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being.
https://darlingshearblog.wordpress.com/bio/

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 teaching artist, performer, community activist, and choreographer exploring relationships between modern, 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: 2019 Chicago Park District NOIP Grant, 2018 Chicago Community Trust Young Leaders Fund Award, and HCL 2018 Sponsored Artist. Destine is enrolled in Bradley University to become a Dance Movement Therapist. This is her sixth season as a Red Clay Dance Company Member.

Chicago Desi Youth Rising Partnership

As a part of our Artist-in-Residence programs, we were so thrilled to partner with CDYR by holding an intimate workshop on September 11th, led by resident artist Parijat Desai, for their organizing collective as they shape new visions and build on a decade of incredible work.

Circle Summit

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 four 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, movement poet 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 is a kinetic philosopher/poet and contemporary choreographer/dancer originally from Japan. Her project, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape, started 1998, is 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 dance began back in 2017 and she has been incorporating them in her choreographic work since. Ayako creates solo, ensemble pieces, and movement installations for traditional stages and site-specific locations. In summer 2022, Ayako premiered "LUCA―the Last Universal Common Ancestor/Chromosome Dance", a site-specific piece for three dancers, as a 3Arts Residency Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center in California, as part of the Claiming Space Exhibition and Festival. Ayako is recipient of a 2022 Esteemed Artist Award from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, a 2021 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography, a 3Arts Residency Fellow residency at Camargo Foundation, France; 3Arts Award; the Trillium Arts 2021 ACE Fellowship in Dance in Asheville, NC. Ayako is a High Concept Labs Fellow (2021-2022). In fall 2022, Ayako goes on tour with her project Suzuribako (Franz Loriot, viola, and Sebastian Strinning, reeds) to Germany and Switzerland, and with Tomeka Reed, cellist, and Rachel Bernsen, dance, to Mores and Wuppertal, Germany, and Antwerp, Belgium. For more information visit 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

Mentored by legendary filmmaker, the late Albert Maysles, Quiñones Rivera started her filmmaking career in 2006. One of her documentary films, It’s a Feeling, Dancing with Jeff Selby was screened at the Dance on Camera Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2014 and at the Cinédanse Film Festival in Quebec in 2015.
Quiñones Rivera completed a fellowship with Kartemquin Film’s Diverse Voices in Docs in 2016. The same year, she directed the music video for Zeshan B's Cryin' In The Streets. The video premiered in 2017 and was featured in Rolling Stone magazine, American Songwriter, Impose magazine and the Chicago Reader.
In 2017 Quiñones Rivera screened the first episode of her new docu-series, Darling Shear, at the NewFest Film Festival in New York City and the DuSable Museum of Chicago. The first season is available on the streaming service, OTV. The second season of Darling Shear will be premiering in 2022 with music by Roy Kinsey, Alexa Græ, Macie Stewart, Akenya Seymour, David Ben-Porat and Greg Ward.
http://www.monserati.com/

Tiffanie L. Beatty, better known as Tiff Beatty, develops public and educational programming, diversity and equity initiatives for arts, culture, and humanities institutions, and is the National Public Housing Museum’s Program Director of Arts, Culture, and Public Policy. A spoken word poet, conversation moderator, host of Art Is Bonfire, and co-founder of the Black feminist arts space, House of the Lorde, Tiff was a featured performer in The People's Church of the G.H.E.T.T.O (2019) and Thank the Lorde (2018), and received the 2020-2021 Chicago United for Equity Senior Fellow and a 2019 Field Leader Award.

Edward " Amani " Conley is an accomplished interdisciplinary artist, educator, and manager from the South Side of Chicago. Subscribing to the philosophy that all art is a collaborative process among the artist, their medium, the audience, and fellow artists, he has continuously sought out new opportunities for exchanges. While he has focused primarily on disciplines involving movement and music, he has collaborated across numerous fields and disciplines.
As a movement artist, he draws upon 20-plus years of experience practicing and teaching the Afro-Brazilian art form, Capoeira. Under the tutelage of Mestra Marisa Cordeiro of Gingarte Capoeira Chicago, he received the rank of Professoro in 2018. During his many years of teaching and training, he has traveled nationally and internationally to participate in and conduct seminars and workshops in the artform. In addition, he has worn many other hats within the Gingarte Capoeira organization, as stage and production manager, choreographer, playwright, and director.