A 'Call to Action' through haunting, graceful dance

The program for Ananya Dance Theatre's new show, "Daak: Call to Action," includes a study guide. Not a bad idea. This is not the usual concert-dance performance. It's neither a repertory concert nor a single work with a narrative arc and displays of show-stopping, virtuosic dancing.

Rather, "Daak" is a 90-minute expression of social injustices done to women and children of color -- and their land -- around the world. Choreographed by ADT artistic director Ananya Chatterjea and directed by Dora Arreola, the work is by turns ferocious and haunting, relentless and repetitive, full of grace and contorted with anger.

It's a ritual the 14 performers have arduously rehearsed and ardently perform. They've encoded the struggles and hardships of women of color into their movements via Chatterjea's singular movement vocabulary: an affecting, and effective, blend of Indian movement idioms.

Here's where the study guide proves helpful. As Chatterjea states, "Creating art with a social justice initiative ... asks for a commitment to creating relationships through our artistic practice." In other words, what occurs onstage is the manifestation of a year's worth of rehearsals, sharing, investigation, discussions and political activism that has bound these women together in a ritual of artistic expression.

Undoubtedly it's changed them, but what about the audience?

Some of the movement tableaux are unforgettable, especially as enhanced by Pearl Rea's lighting, the echo-y chanting and tinkling bells of Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan's score and Tacoumba Aiken's harrowing documentary film footage. In particular, Chatterjea uses unison movement often and to great effect.

When the women rhythmically stomp their feet, the Earth itself seems to be booming its discontent. They wield bunches of long grass like paintbrushes, tools or weapons, or carry them like burdens. They pump and swing their arms like the valves or pistons of machinery. They slide across the floor, in rows, like intersecting gears.

"My name is nameless, indigenous," intones Omise'eke Natasha Tinsely, the poet/griot of the piece. And indeed, the unison sections erase the dancers' individualism. They're cogs in the postcolonial machine. And yet, the rhythmic unison also expresses solidarity in the amplification -- en masse -- of the one.

As a call to action, "Daak" couches its didacticism in a women's ritual that, as such, largely exists outside criticism. Which is where the audience may feel as well: outside, as admiring but excluded observers.