Private Project

the blues of my unraveling are laced with the salt of your memory

Conceived and performed by Guggenheim Award winning choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, this journey through corridors of memory and ritual practices to touch dark spaces of pain that lie buried deep within us, is a meditation on loss, undoing, a commitment to remembering, and a reaching towards light.

  • Ananya Chatterjea
    Director
  • Darren Johnson
    Director
  • Ananya Chatterjea
    Choreographed and Performed by
  • Darren Johnson
    Cinematography & Editing
  • Sharon Bridgforth
    Text
  • Renée Copeland
    Musical Score
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Dance
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes 45 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 10, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    3,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron
    Akron
    United States
    June 19, 2021
    North American Premiere
  • Florence Dance On Screen
    Florence
    Italy
    October 30, 2021
    European Premiere
    Official Selection
  • IMMAGI]NA Film Festival
    Pozzuoli, Naples
    Italy
    November 20, 2021
    Official Selection
  • Philadelphia World Film Festival
    Philadelphia
    United States
    March 7, 2022
    Official Selection
  • The Outlet Dance Project
    Hamilton, New Jersey
    United States
    October 20, 2022
Distribution Information
  • Darren Johnson
    Country: United States
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Ananya Chatterjea, Darren Johnson

Ananya Chatterjea’s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a commitment to healing justice. She is artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a dance company of BIPOC women & femmes, and co-founder of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice. In response to the Twin Cities Uprising (2020), she created the Kutumkāri (Relationship-making) Healing Movement series with a particular invitation to BIPOC women and femme healers. Her second book, Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies was published in 2020. She teaches Choreographing Social Justice, Dance History, and Contemporary Practice at the University of Minnesota.

A multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in film and poetry, Darren Johnson’s films span subjects from implicit bias and social justice to music and performing arts. Most recently, his films have screened at the Harlem Film Festival, Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival, and The London International Screen Dance Film Festival. His spoken word poetry releases include the audiobook, Conundrums of Indignant Bliss and a live jazz album Poetic Explorations with the Whitewashed Conundrums.

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Director Statement

In trying to find a way out of a plethora of global crises, and to spark empathy for what is unknown and not fully understood, I have come to believe in the power of art - whether dance, film, song, painting, photograph or poem - to reach across our learned cultural barriers, challenging us to think “outside of our box” and imagine our worlds differently. Capturing and creating moments both extraordinary and resonant, art succeeds when it touches our deepest emotions and sensibilities, reflecting and illuminating issues we struggle with, engaging us and provoking questions about where we are as a species, where we’ve been and where we might go.