In Your Words
Press
Conference of the Birds was a narrative journey with a style that captivated the mystical spirit of the original text, but that was unconventional in form. It was a conscious study at all levels and embraced Sufism with multimedia arms… Love was constantly present, whether in a mystical or contemporary performance language, as an anti-authoritarian act, an act against racism and against false integrity.
Palestine Cultural Platform
[Anikaya’s] Conference of Birds accompanies us on trips of memory across boats of seas and land alike, to put us in an inevitable confrontation with dispersion or death. When the human birds danced their dance on the stage, their bodies under the lights were a special and unique vessel weaving stories of transit and wandering.
When Wendy Jehlen goes on stage, you know you are in the Realm of the Heart.
The Hindu (New Delhi)
Conference of the Birds, presented by Wendy Jehlen’s ANIKAYA dance company during the National School of Drama’s 21st International Theatre Festival, is a experience we all hope for when we enter a theatre, one that takes us on an emotional and visceral journey that can shift the imprints in our core.
Asian Age (New Delhi)
Restores a faith in life itself.
The Weekly Dig
Combining movement from South Indian dance, Brazilian capoeira, and a long list of other sources, the piece doesn’t represent contemporary dance as most people know it, or a mere fusion of styles. Instead it reflects the philosophy of Jehlen’s Boston-based dance company, ANIKAYA, which seeks to remove what she calls the “imagined barriers” between people, culture, and art around the world.
The Harvard Crimson
The internationally-reaching ANIKAYA Dance Theater’s The Women Gather, with Wendy Jehlen as director/choreographer, illustrated a quintessential human experience: in sound, in movement, in communal sharing.
Dance Informa
Jehlen and the dancers have collectively created a kind of new contemporary language — muscular, luxuriously weighted and full-bodied, chockful of gestural flourishes, and kinetically courageous.
The Boston Globe
Wendy Jehlen has created a riveting and fascinating new language in dance that reflects the society in which we live.
Evidance (Montreal)
Courageous choreography
Festival Diary (New Delhi)
Participant and Audience Testimonies
There was one (company) before Wendy, and a different one after Wendy.
Danielle – director of Corpo Cidadão, host of Run Like a Girl – Belo Horizonte, Brazil
The work with Wendy was incredible. It was an experience that embraced cooperation, participation through movement – every day movement like running, walking, falling -listening to each other. The participants were a very diverse group. We shared our experiences with each other in words, and also through movement.
participant in Run Like a Girl – Tijuana, Mexico
I think we need more and more of this, in more parks, more spaces around the city, for people to be close to, to get used to this kind of artistic intervention in the city.
audience member for Run Like a Girl – Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Such a process of exchange and communication (like ANIKAYA’s) is crucial for a society.
Kuo, theater director and teaching partner for Migrations – Beijing, China
This project made me reconsider my relationship with my body…and while exploring possibilities in my own body, the people around me helped me to explore together, so there was a learning environment.
participant, Migrations – Beijing, China
These 6 days have been worth years and years
participant, Run Like a Girl – Tokyo, Japan
To say this performance is profound is to say too little. It is cliche however true that words fail me. The only one that come to mind is cleansing. And I am grateful.
audience member, The Women Gather, Boston
deep communal empathy and care.
audience member, The Women Gather, Boston
This is necessary.
audience member, The Women Gather, Boston
Anikaya’s production of Conference of the Birds reverberates through one’s body and psyche. It encompasses life’s voyage through the worst and best of humanity. Grief navigated alone transforms when witnessed and held in community.
This production is at once epic, thrilling, moving, devastating, sensual, angry and full of love.
Ruth Levin, Theater Director, Capetown, South Africa