ANIKAYA Dance Theater Workshop

Open to Duke students and community guests. Register here: https://duke.is/p/7epk

Workshop with Wendy Jehlen of ANIKAYA Dance Theater. Experience the process connected to ANIKAYA Dance Theater's choreographic work, "Conference of the Birds". This workshop invites participants to experience practices rooted in listening, drawing on the processes of transformation - from individual-centered movement to a collective Self - that run through the piece.

Biography: Wendy Jehlen's career has been marked by international explorations, study and creative collaboration. She received her Bachelor's degree in ritual and performance from Brown University and her Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on performance and religion in the former Persian world. Wendy engages in collaborations across languages, culture, media and genres. Her work questions the boundaries that we imagine between ourselves, and seeks to break down these imagined walls through an embodied practice of radical empathy. This practice takes her around the world to conduct workshops, collaborations and performances which she calls collectively Dance Diplomacy.

Her unique approach to choreography incorporates elements of Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Capoeira, Kalaripayattu, West African dance, Butoh, and a wide-range of Contemporary movement forms. Her emotionally powerful choreography has been created and performed in the US, Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Italy, India, Japan, Mali, Mozambique, Palestine and Turkey.