About

Mandate

ĀNANDAM creates contemporary performances with diverse aesthetic models that centre the body. We engage in rigorous examinations of form, content and context. Our projects contribute to understanding the evolving contemporary in dance. Anandam's big artistic question - what could be other approaches to choreography outside of the readily accessible ones that take for granted 'eurocentric ' dance training? - has inspired us to imagine other possibilities for creation, connection and international collaboration for an impact focused on the development of artists in Canada, Ontario and Toronto.

ĀNANDAM houses multiple, integrated activities that involve:

• the creation, presentation and touring of our own works

• the incubation, presentation and curation of works by other artists (local/national/international)

• engagement initiatives for audiences and artists

• workshops / master classes with artists and mentorship for emerging artists

We create and present performances shaped by:

• aesthetics and ethics nurtured through curiosity, accessibility and responsiveness

• values of presence and collective inquiry

• inclusive of diverse bodies and movement practices

• criticality that is receptive to a multitude of viewpoints on the dancing body

Vision

Anandam seeks to cultivate a rigorous and curious space for dance to thrive. A vibrant ecology requires the long-term resourcing of diverse aesthetics and artists working from multiple practices. We understand dance as an act of knowledge creation involving the dynamic relationship between dancer and audience. We believe dance can actively affect and contribute to the cultural and imaginative space of our world. It is vital and important for this reason.

Our choreographic projects contribute to understanding the evolving contemporary in dance. Our curation and programming enriches the development of artists in their own works. Our audience and community engagement programs offer unique entry points to experiencing performance.The relevance of our vision is ensured and renewed through an ethos of collaboration, curiosity, shared resources, partnership, conversation with stakeholders, and the cultivation/maintenance of relationships locally, provincially, across Canada and internationally.

History

ĀNANDAṀ was founded in 2010 and is a not-for-profit charitable arts organization based in Toronto, Canada.

Since its inception in 2010, ĀNANDAṀ has cultivated and presented solo and ensemble choreographies, interdisciplinary collaborations, curated series and festivals. Our works have been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people locally, nationally and internationally. Major repertoire works include Ephemeral Artifacts, a durational piece adaptable for multiple dance artists in radically diverse forms; Cascade, cited by NOW Magazine as one of the top 5 dance shows of 2014; the trilogy of Seismology, Glaciology and Weather, the public space work of Divergent Dances and the gallery installation of Melting / Mourning. We maintain a robust international network of collaborations and touring with artists and organizations invested in fostering contemporary experimentation in dance and critical thinking in performance. The company has toured its repertoire to Europe, the Arctic, South Africa, India, Canada and USA.

ĀNANDAṀ's interest in alternative presentation contexts has led to cross-sectoral partnerships that are transformative for the company, our partners, and the potential of performance spaces. Major partners have included Bata Shoe Museum, while presenters include Nuit Blanche, performing in sites such as the AGO, Queen’s Quay West, Wilkinson Eyre pedestrian bridge (Eaton’s Centre) and Scarborough Town Centre.  We produced the Contemporary Circus Arts Festival of Toronto 2013-2017 (CCAFT) with Girl in the Sky Productions and the Body Brake series with Theatre Passe Muraille 2014-19. In 2017/18, with the catalytic support of the TAC Open Door program, we launched Contemporaneity, a residency program/presenting series in partnership with legacy venues in Toronto.

Supported by the Metcalf Foundation’s Creative Strategies Incubator 2014-17 we explored public participation in performance and developed our ongoing innovative Audience-in-Residence (A-I-R) program. Our wide spectrum of projects contributes to a profound relationship with our audience and community, based on collaboration, conversation and curiosity.

Our People

Brandy Leary/Founding Artistic Director/Resident Choreographer
brandy@anandam.ca

Brandy is a choreographer and dancer. She creates contemporary performances informed by dance, martial arts, circus and theatre. The dances she creates examine structural questions on the body, space, perception and spectator. Her works have been described as “phenomenological interventions” (Canadian Theatre) “soulful and sensuous” (NYTimes) and “embodying a hallucinatory, dreamlike state” (NOW Magazine).

Her choreographies have been produced and performed in Canada, Europe, India, the Arctic, South Africa and the USA. Presented most often in visual and public art contexts they have occupied theatres, urban environments, festivals, museums, art galleries and isolated landscapes. She is a triple Indo Shastri Canadian fellow, a Chalmers Fellow for choreographic research (2020/21), Resident Choreographer at the Bata Shoe Museum (2010-15) and has been visiting faculty at the University of Calgary (Canada) and Shiv Nadar University (India).

As a dancer Brandy has performed in the works of Gitanjali Kolanad, Lee Su-Feh, Jenn Goodwin, Chandralekha (posthumous remount), Denise Fujiwara (The WITCH, film, dir. Robert Eggers) and is currently training and working with choreographer Padmini Chettur (IN). She is the founder and Artistic Director of Anandam Dance theatre, the choreographer of Why Not Theatre’s internationally touring show of the Mahabharata and Co Founder/Co Director of Collective Space (Toronto).

Harikishan S Nair / Associate Artistic Director
aad@anandam.ca

Candice Falby / General Manager
gm@anandam.ca

Gitanjali Kolanad / THINK DANCE Facilitator / Audience-in-Residence

Gitanjali Kolanad was involved in the practice, performance, and teaching of bharata natyam for close to forty years. She performed in major cities in Europe, America and India, including London, New York, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Toronto, Tokyo, New Delhi, Bombay, and Madras. Critics praised her performances of the classical repertoire, while her contemporary choreographic work won new audiences for bharata natyam. 

Her work was often multi-disciplinary, arising out of collaborations with artists from other disciplines: director Phillip Zarrilli, video/installation artists Ray Langenbach and Riaz Mehmood, poet Judith Kroll, violinist Parmela Attariwala, to name a few.  Her performances incorporated folk and ritual forms of dance, theatre and martial art forms from South India. She created eight major full-length dance works, many of which she performed all over the world. She stopped performing in 2007.

Gitanjali's short story "The American Girl" won second prize in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards. The story is part of a collection published in 2011 by Penguin India and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award that year.  She has written numerous articles on aspects of Indian dance for well-known Indian publications, such as Open Magazine and Seminar. For two years, she contributed a column on arts and culture to the newspaper New Indian Express. Her novel, ‘Girl Made of Gold’ came out online May 2020, and launched August 1 2020.

She co-founded IMPACT - Indian Martial and Performance Arts Collective of Toronto, which teaches the Indian martial art form of kalaripayat to at-risk youth in underserved neighbourhoods.  From 2013 to 2017, she was Professor in the Department of Art, Design and Performing Arts, at Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, India, teaching and developing a fully-fledged performing arts program.

Siobhán Sleath / Lighting Designer

Siobhán is a Toronto-based Lighting Designer and has been collaborating with ĀNANDAṀ since 2005. Her shows with ĀNANDAṀ include: Ephemeral Artifacts, Verisimilitude (University of Calgary), Continuum: Pushing Towards the Light (Nuit Blanche 2018), Contemporaneity, Weather (Bata Shoe Museum), Seismology, On Being Prepared, Psychic Choreography, Divergent Dances for Windows and Walls and Precipice (Bata Shoe Museum), Confluence, Angikam, Anchored and Tirtha (Ganakrishti Natya Utsav 2008, Kolkata), Liberation and Frida and Herself (Toronto and New York Fringe Festival).

Siobhán also works in Theatre and Opera and has been a Lighting Designer for: Theatre Aquarius, Shaw Festival, Canadian Opera Company, Arkansas Rep, Neptune Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, Drayton Entertainment, Thousand Island Playhouse, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Globe Theatre, Sudbury Theatre Centre, Musical Stage Company, Larchaud Dance Project, Harold Green Jewish Theatre, Winnipeg Studio Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times and Theatre Passe Muraille. Siobhán is the Associate Lighting Designer on the Toronto Production of Come From Away. She was also the Associate Lighting Designer on Sousatzka: The Musical.

She has been an Assistant Lighting Designer for two seasons at the COC on Nightingale and Other Short Fables and Ariodante. She worked five seasons as an Assistant Lighting Designer at the Stratford Festival on twenty productions including: To Kill a Mockingbird, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Cyrano de Bergerac and Dangerous Liaisons. In 2010, she executed the lighting design of Kiss Me, Kate on the Festival Stage.

Occasionally, between theatre shows, Siobhán has done some work in Art Galleries and Museums. This includes the lighting and layout design of THE ART OF BANKSY: UNAUTHORIZED PRIVATE COLLECTION in Toronto, Miami, Gothenburg and Sydney, as well as Lighting design of the exhibition Star Turns at the Bata Shoe museum and programming the lighting score of Brendan Fernandes’ piece FUTURE (…—…) PERFECT in Nuit Blanche 2008.

In 2014 Siobhán was shortlisted for a Pauline McGibbon Award. She was a recipient of the Tom Patterson Award from the Stratford Festival in 2010.. More information can be found on her website: www.siobhansleathdesign.com

Pip Bradford / Production Manager

Pip Bradford is an independent producer, production manager, and stage manager who works with many companies in Toronto, including ĀNANDAṀ, The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, 7a*11d Performance Art Festival, SummerWorks, Luminato, Red Sky Performance, Nightwood Theatre, Ahuri Theatre, and The Theatre Centre. You’ve probably seen something she’s done, but you almost certainly didn’t see her do it. Pip also creates installation art with Rebecca Vandevelde as Art is Hard Productions, most recently reprising their installation BLANKET FORT for The Bentway for Family Day 2020.

In her spare time, Pip works as a member of the Means of Production, a collective of freelance production staff seeking to promote values-based production work while advocating for equitable working conditions and providing resources to the independent production community. She is also a zine reviewer for Broken Pencil Magazine.