(She/Her/Hers)
Chitra Vairavan is a seeker, contemporary dancer/choreographer, educator and artist of Thamizh/South Indian-American, non-Brahmin descent. Vairavan is immersed in both Thamizh/Tamil culture and progressive brown politics in the U.S. Her embodied practice and experimental process is rooted in deep listening, spatial observation, freedoms, poetry, vulnerability and ancestral memory. She chooses to gesture towards and embody within the practice of liberation and decolonization in creative choices. The aesthetic of her movement is through both yoga and contemporary Indian dance forms – mainly a mixture of training in Bharatanatyam, Odissi and Yorchha™. Her dance has been featured throughout the Twin Cities and abroad since 2004, as a co-founding member and former dancer with Ananya Dance Theatre and later in 2007 as a dance collaborator with Aniccha Arts. Vairavan is the recipient of the 2016 McKnight Artist Fellowship in Dance, 2018 Naked Stages Fellowship, and the 2020-2021 Springboard for the Arts’ 20/20 Fellowship among other honors. www.chitravairavan.com.