Anika Nayak

Anika Nayak is a Boston based theater artist focusing on Stage Management, Electrician Work, and Teaching. Anika focuses on creating non hierarchical and collaborative spaces in which theater and art can be created and experienced as what she believes is at it’s core, a universal language of being. Anika most recently has been the Production Stage Manager for White Snake Opera, Production Stage Manager for the UMass Amherst Theater Department, a resident Master Electrician for Moonbox Theater, a returning teaching artist at Wheelock Family Theater and is the Technical Director and Stage Manager for ANIKAYA Dance Theatre. Their work has taken them throughout Massachusetts as well as internationally to Palestine, South Africa, Mozambique and India. She is currently pursuing a certificate in Intimacy Direction and Choreography as the next step in expanding her theater repertoire and creating safe and inclusive workspaces.

Jonathan Taylor

Jonathan Taikina Taylor is an actor, director, and movement artist based in Brooklyn. His work has been seen across the US, India, Sweden, Chile, Mexico, and Nepal. Jonathan is Artistic Director of The SuperGeographics and an Associate Artist of The SITI Company. He holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Boston University and an MA in International Relations and Global Justice from Brooklyn College. He is on faculty at The New School and The Atlantic/NYU.

Hussein Rashid

Hussein Rashid is the assistant dean for Religion and Public Life and a lecturer on religion and public life at Harvard Divinity School. He is also the founder of islamicate, L3C, a consultancy focusing on religious literacy and cultural competency. He works with a variety of NGOs, foundations, non-profits, and governmental agencies for content expertise on religion broadly, with a specialization on Islam.  His current projects include a documentary on Muslims in America. He worked with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan as a content expert on their exhibit “America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far.” He is also an executive producer on the award-winning animated short “The Secret History of Muslims in America.” He recently finished working as the Project Director of The Arts of Devotion at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Hussein is a fellow with The Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship, the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, and the Truman National Security Project. He is also a member of the Guild of Future Architects and a Dūcō Expert. He was a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and a term member on the Council of Foreign Relations. He is on the advisory boards of The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (Building Bridges Program), Sacred Matters, and Rivrb. He served on the advisory boards of Values and Voices, Abe’s Eats, Deily, Project Interfaith, Everplans, Vennly, the British Council’s Our Shared Future Program, Intersections International, and Al-Rawiya. In addition to ANIKAYA, he serves on the board of the Interfaith Center of New York.

Lydia Volaitis

Lydia Volaitis is a researcher, consultant, educator and mentor.  She is certified in mediation and in restorative justice. Her current mission is to help make a college education – and all it brings – accessible and achievable to high schoolers and adult learners.   Lydia is deeply inspired by ANIKAYA’s goals of empowerment, interdependence, and connection, and tries to mirror those themes in her classrooms.  

Genevieve Hyacinthe

Genevieve Hyacinthe is Associate Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture and MFA Fine Art Faculty member at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Dedicated to D. Soyini Madison’s “loving ethnography,” she views research and writing as critical—yet poetic—heart-felt practice embracing “unfinish” over closed, authoritative perspectives. Her  first book, Radical Virtuosity: Ana Mendieta and the Black Atlantic (MIT Press, 2019), cast the Cuban-American artist anew in relation to her construction of art formats emergent from her imaginary of ritual practices from West Africa and the Caribbean. A practitioner of Mande and Haitian drum and dance, Gen views her primary methodology as Black Atlantic Phenomenology and continually wonders about risk at the intersection of art practice—including writing, research—and abstraction across media. 

R. Danielle Egan

R. Danielle Egan, is Fuller-Maathai Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Intersectionality Studies at Connecticut College, where she is also Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer. Danielle Egan’s research examines the social construction of sexual “problems.” She is fascinated by the ways in which cultural institutions (medical, religious, political, psychological, scholarly disciplines) create and defend norms of social and sexual acceptability. She is also particularly interested in the creative ways people negotiate, resist and are, at times, complicit with sexual hegemony. Professor Egan’s research has also been discussed on BBC Radio 4 and NPR’s Good Parenting Radio. Her research with Gail Hawkes was sought out by the Home Office in England and by the Scottish Government. She contributed to the Wellcomme Archive and Trust Report on Sexualization. When not in the classroom or in her office, she enjoys as much time as possible with her two daughters, working with individuals as a psychoanalyst, or in her studio painting.

Orphée Ahehehinnou

Orphée Ahehehinnou is on the faculty of Centre Chorégraphique Multicorps, and he is a member of both Cie Multicorps and ANIKAYA Dance Theater. Orphée graduated in traditional and contemporary African dance (Class of 2018-2020) at the Ecole des Sable in Senegal. In 2008 he met Anice Pépé, star of traditional Beninese music, and a year later became dance coordinator for his company. He has participated in training courses and workshops with choreographers such as Andreya Ouamba, Marcel Gbeffa, Bienvenu Basie, Wendy Jehlen, Vincent Harisdo, Richard Adossou and Rachelle Agbossou among others. In 2015 he joined the traditional dance company 3L IFEDE. He later joined Compagnie Multicorps. In 2016, he created his own dance company, Aflikidjoo to share his experience with young Beninese dancers. He participated in the 8th Francophonie games in Abidjan in 2017 with the Multi Corps/Marcel GBEFFA Company. In Bamako in 2019, he participated in the Fari Foni Waati festival where he enriched his experience with other choreographers from various countries. He danced in a project by Marcel Gbeffa and Sarah Trouche entitled DIDE, part of the Africa 2020 season in France. This project was presented at the CDCN Ateliers in Paris, at the Lieu Unique in Nantes and toured Africa. Orphée has worked with ANIKAYA since 2017 as a teaching mentee in the first Run Like a Girl workshop in Cotonou and Parakou, Benin. He has since worked with ANIKAYA Artistic Director Wendy Jehlen a number of workshops in Benin, has danced with the Birds in Migrations in Mozambique, and is currently developing the new ANIKAYA work, T(h)ree.

K Sarveshan

K Sarveshan is a South African Bharatanatyam artist of Indian Origin. His performance practice rigorously explores the complexities of his diasporic cultural heritage and his embodied experience. The interplay between Bharatanatyam, Kalaripayattu, Yoga, Traditional Indian Folk, Kathak, and Carnatic Music has revealed to him a creative path that ferries between the “classical” and the “contemporary”. Bharatanatyam, however, remains the fertile ground from which his creative endeavors take root. Sarveshan’s distinct understanding of Bharatanatyam is derived from his initial training with Savitri Naidoo – student of the formidable Pandanallur Srinivasa Pillai and Indira Rajan – and his expert training received from living legends, Natyaacharya Shanta & V.P Dhananjayan. In addition to being a seasoned Bharatanatyam performer, Sarveshan concerns himself in areas of dance research and scholarship, with a first-class BA Honors in Performance Studies from The University of Cape Town (2021). Diverse dance-work experiences at Bharata Kalanjali, Leela Samson’s Spanda Dance Company, ANIKAYA Dance Theater & The University of Cape Town further enhance Sarveshan’s credibility as an award-winning Bharatanatyam performer, dance-maker and teacher. In 2018, The Madras Music Academy awarded Sarveshan the “Gutty Vasu Endowment Prize” for being the “Best Performer” at the Spirit of Youth Festival 2017. Other titles that have been conferred on him are “Natya Purna” from Bharata Kalanjali, “Natya Bhaarathi” from Visakha Art & Dance Association & “Yuva Kalaa Bhaarathi” from Bhaarat Kalaachaar. He is the 2021-2022 recipient of The Kalaavahini Junior Fellowship, an initiative by Malavika Sarukkai, for which he created and premiered his recent solo work titled, KailāsaKrishna.

Ibrahim Abdo

Director, choreographer, and dancer with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Cairo University. He began acting and dancing in 2006 while in university. In 2010 he joined Karima Mansour’s Cairo Contemporary Dance Center training program. In 2017 he received the “Step Beyond” travel grant to attend Impulse-Tanz festival in Austria. In 2016 Ibrahim joined the first Interdisciplinary Music Theater Group in Cairo and concurrently began his own movement research research on the flow of the movement in the body from a contemporary point of view of Sufi whirling and incorporating the concept of free fall. In 2017 and 2018 in service of this research, he conducted two residencies at Alanus University, Germany to learn more about the concept of the flow as understood in the Eurythmie studies. In June 2018 he performed the world premiere of the work “Green Leaves are Gone,” which is a work choreographed in collaboration between Egyptian and Italian choreographers as part of “Focus Young Mediterranean and Middle East Choreographers” in Inteatro Festival. Ibrahim was an ArtsLink Fellow at Dance Exchange in 2022. Ibrahim is interested in redefining the relationship between art institutions and artists in Egypt and the Middle East. In 2022 he established the “What’s Next” platform in Cairo with the intention of  promoting and embodying values like transparency, integrity, and non-hierarchy in the arts. He has been a member of ANIKAYA Conference of the Birds ensemble since 2018.

Annie Wiegand

One of the only Deaf professional lighting designers in the country. Her heightened sense of sight adds a unique layering to her designs and amplifies her story-telling capabilities with a visually-inspired perspective. She is an Adjunct Professor of lighting design, as well as production management at Gallaudet University. She is also a member of Wingspace Design Collective.

Sam Whyte

Song weaver and story singer. She enjoys vocal improvisation, CircleSinging and vocal exploration as a means to connect to her Self and all her various parts. Her practice comes from her personal journey through mental health challenges. In her work as an IFS informed Voice Movement Therapy practitioner, her desire is to help others feel deeply connected to their voices, their bodies and to create song, dance, story, art as container for even that which we have learned is unspeakable. She has found that the vulnerability that comes from compassionately connecting to the Shadow is vital to understanding our Selves and connecting to others.

Sutikshna Veeravalli

Performing Indian arts vocalist and dancer from Chicago, IL. She has been pursuing both music and dance for over 20 years, takes joy in teaching both arts herself, and intends to continue lifelong. Her performances across North America and India have earned her several accolades by renowned art institutes. Sutikshna also connects music and dance with her work in Special Education and public speaking. She contributes regularly to her Indian arts communities through CAREspaces, a non-for-profit that aims to create a safer and more ethical workspace.

Marlene Santana

Visual artist based in São Paulo and working in many media – from puppetry to installation to private murals and public art. Her work addresses questions of violence against black and indigenous women and children. She works with vulnerable populations, including people with intellectual disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence, and other marginalized people and her own creations reflect this.

Mali Sastri

Singer, songwriter, composer, and performer based in Boston, MA. For over fifteen years Mali has been the primary songwriter, lead vocalist, and frontwoman for the Boston art rock band, Jaggery. Mali trained in the expressive arts discipline Voice Movement Therapy, and her vocal range exhibits this therapeutic approach to sound-making, moving  from “new-age songbird to woman scorned to woodland fairy to blood-thirsty werewolf to sultry lounge singer” (Boston Herald). Mali is a registered VMT practitioner, helping others to find and free their own voices.  She also produces, curates, and performs in the ongoing performance series Org, out of various underground-and-otherwise venues in the Boston area.

Fen Rotstein

(she/her) Multimedia artist and AV engineer based in Boston, MA. As a latina and jewish trans woman, her work and collaborative efforts often occupy the intersection of her own lived experience, helping to illuminate her lived experiences, as well as those of other marginalized communities and peoples.

Luciane Ramos-Silva

Dancer, choreographer, anthropologist and cultural organizer. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts/Dance at UNICAMP researching the notions of coloniality in dance, pedagogical approaches and south-south relations. She is Artistic Director of the São Paulo-based Luciane Ramos Silva e Coletividade with which she created the works “Brita” and “Na fresta da certitude o vermelho escuro” and received a Fomento a Dança from the city of São Paulo. She was keynote speaker at the 2020 Collegium for African Diaspora Dance at Duke University. She was a guest editor of WSQ Feminist Press in 2021. In 2021 she was a visiting professor in the body arts department at Unicamp in São Paulo.

Lone Motsomi

Started dancing at the age of 7, inspired by hip hop culture. She joined Mophato Dance Theater in 2013. She performed in South Africa at national and international levels working with artists such as Freshlyground and Somizi Mhlongo. She had the opportunity to perform on Broadway with the Pula! Ensemble in 2018 as the lead dancer. She also works as an actor and stunt artist. She recently finished filming The Women King as a stunt performer.

Melissa Huser

Melissa Huser has been learning Odissi, a Classical Indian dance form, from Mouli Pal, a student of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, for the last 19 years. She has participated in Wendy’s pieces such as Lilith, Silent Flight, and The Deep. From 2008 to 2012, Melissa danced at times for opening songs of the psychedelic alternative New Age band Prince Rama, with Taraka and Nimai Larson. She performed in outdoors spaces like PS1 in New York, and traveled with them to the SXSW (South by Southwest) music festival in Austin in 2011 and to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Butlins, England, curated by Animal Collective.

Raquel Flor

Independent artist and massage therapist. She has been practicing martial arts since she was 15 years old. Her trajectory in dance began in 2015 with the practices of Somatic Education in Dance. In 2016 she joined Cia ANIKAYA Dance Theater Brazil. In 2017, she began her independent research on the female figure in society, since then she has participated in projects created by women and that address themes of the feminist struggle and LGBTQIA +.

Christie Dossou

Dancer from Cotonou, Benin. She has trained in Contemporary dance and dance pedagogy at Centre Choregraphique Multicorps in Benin, Ecole des Sables in Senegal and CDC la Termitiere in Burkina Faso, and in latin dance and Capoeira also in Benin. She is currently dancing in Pina Bausch company’s special project Le Sacre du Printemps and with Olivier Tarpaga. She has been working with ANIKAYA since 2017 when she was an apprentice instructor in the first edition of Run Like a Girl in Cotonou and Parakou, Benin.

Cassandre Charles

Interdisciplinary embodiment artist from Boston, MA. She comes from a lineage of Haitian revolutionists, artists, musicians, politicians, physicians, and social justice advocates. Cassandre’s most recent residencies include Danza Orgánica’s We Create Residency & Cohort, and Monkeyhouse’s Malden Dance Mile where she showcased her dance films ‘Travel to Nope, A Digital Art Visual Journal,’ and ‘WHATEVER’. This multi-media film series was formed in response to the theme “embodiment of liberation” offered by Danza Orgánica. Cassandre is a member of somatics expert Joshua Elbaum’s Somatic Artistry Cohort and the ArtsAssembly Creative Cohort. She is an Artist Collaborator with Monkeyhouse and a member of the Boston Dance Alliance Dance & Disabilities Cohort on developing accessible resources for people with visible and invisible disabilities. Cassandre holds a BA in Speech, Interpersonal & Organizational Communication from Hampton University.

Michelle Bach-Coulibaly

Performance artist and educator who has created over 40 original pieces of contemporary movement theatre for that investigate socio-political canvases, cross-cultural narratives, and embodied texts. At Brown University she directs New Works/World Traditions, a research-to-performance troupe of actors, musicians, dancers and imagists who develop new theatre for national and international festivals, educational venues, and for the concert stage. Bach-Coulibaly has conceived, written and performed over thirty different educational programs that regularly tour nationally and internationally that utilize the power of performance to service public health, sustainable entrepreneurship and egalitarian exchange. Since 1990, her work in Mali has been focused upon building Yeredon, a research center for cultural preservation, international collaboration and social activism. Yeredon is the home for the Bloodline Project, a unique international collaboration and edutainment program to combat the devastating effects of malaria and other debilitating calamities.

David Bengali

David Bengali is a theater and multimedia designer, based in New York for the past 14 years. He has designed theater, installations, opera, and dance Off-Broadway, Regionally, and internationally, and has worked as an associate designer on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Regionally. David holds a BSE in Computer Science with a Certificate in Theater and Dance from Princeton University, and an MFA in Design for Stage and Film from NYU Tisch. He is a current Arts Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts of Princeton University, where he is exploring intersections between technology and performance via collaborative projects (and also teaches a course titled Technologies for Storytelling in the Performing Arts). David is a firm believer that deep collaboration is key to to creating relevant, affecting works of performance, and that breaking down perceived boundaries between fields, in methods and in content, is key to both the creation and audience reception of artworks in the 21st century. Although technology is a critical tool in David’s work, he seeks not to drive story from what technology can do, but rather to ask questions about what stories we wish to tell, and determine from that starting point how technology can serve art. He strives to create work that derives its energy from the most ancient form of storytelling: live humans sharing physical space with one another. Recent design credits include: The Great Leap (Atlantic Theater Company); Frankenstein (Dallas Theater Center); Rockin’ Road To Dublin (National Tour); Assembled Identity (HERE); The Temple Bombing (Alliance Theatre); Uncommon Sense (Tectonic Theater Project); Van Gogh’s Ear (Ensemble for the Romantic Century); Anna Akhmatova, Jules Verne From The Earth To The Moon (BAM);  Ring of Fire (Endstation Theatre); The Tempest (Classic Stage Company/The Young Company);  Kill Me Like You Mean It (Stolen Chair), Two Point Oh (59E59);  The Sensational Josephine Baker (Theatre Row); Cav/Pag (Tri Cities Opera); Little Nemo in Slumberland (Sarasota Opera)  Jamal Jackson Dance, Ephrat Asherie Dance, Battery Dance Company, Soho Rep.

Shaw Pong Liu

Violinist and composer Shaw Pong Liu engages diverse communities with creative music and social dialogue by innovating the audience experience of live music. Collaborating with artists from a wide range of disciplines, Shaw Pong creates genre-defying performances which interplay written and improvised music with storytelling and movement. Recent projects include Sunbar, connecting Bostonians with sunlight, warmth, and each other during cold winter months, with the vision of a future mobile solarium; What Artists Knead, a series of breadmaking parties across five neighborhoods in Boston for artists to bake bread and discuss their ideas for Boston’s creative future; Water Graffiti for Peace, a series of outdoor Chinese water calligraphy sessions inviting public play and conversations about peace; A Bird a Day, exploring birdsong, sunrises and composition (resulting in a site-specific composition for 18 solo string players in three tiers of balconies); and Soldiers’ Tales Untold, a musical-narrative production mixing veterans’ stories, live music, and audience dialogue about war. An avid explorer of new sounds, she has received commissions from A Far Cry, Lorelei Ensemble, and Dialogue Chamber Music, and she has premiered new works with groups including Bang-On-A-Can All-Stars, MIT’s Gamelan GalakTika, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She is a teaching artist for the Silk Road Project, the Urbano Project, Young Audiences of Massachusetts and the New England Conservatory of Music. Shaw Pong was an Expressing Boston Public Art Fellow in 2014-15, artist-ethnographer for Boston’s cultural planning initiative, Boston Creates in 2015, Artist-in-Residence for the City of Boston’s first Artist-in-Residence program in 2016 and is a 2017 Brother Thomas Fellow.

Shahou Andalibi

Shahou Andalibi began learning and performing Persian classical singing and Maqam music at the age of 4 under his father’s teaching. His father, Iraj Andalibi was a well-known Persian musician whose work was especially appreciated amongst Kurdish people of Iran. At the age of 6, he started playing the daf with Maqam method under the supervision of great masters such as Khalifeh Mirza Agha, Khalife Karim, and in the method of his grandfather Haj Abdolsamad Andalibi. Shahou started playing ney professionally at the age of 13. He played in the Avaye Andalib Ensemble alongside his father, Iraj Andalibi. His dedication to music as well as his desire to learn works of other cultures led him to start learning classical western music in 1991. Despite his many valuable and successful performances in Iran, he was banned from performing in public by the Iranian regime in 2013 for one year because of promoting female performance in Iran and his leading role in the vocals of Mahbanu Ensembles accompanied by the two great female musicians, Sahar Mohamad and Mahdieh Mohamadkhani. 

Marcel Gbeffa

Marcel Gbeffa is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Centre Chorégraphique Multi Corps in Cotonou, Benin.

Centre Chorégraphique Multi Corps welcomes more than 150 regular students per year, and provides courses, workshops, as well as choreographic and interdisciplinary residencies. Gbeffa is also the director of the Connexion festival and the Labo workshops Benin. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Residence for the 2022-2023 academic year at SUNY Purchase.

Gbeffa trained at the ‘Ecole des Sables’ in Senegal  and began his choreographic career in 2008 with his solo “Et si” which launched him internationally at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques d’Afrique et de l’Océan Indien.

As a performer and assistant choreographer, he has worked and collaborated with choreographers such as Andreya Ouamba, Marceline Lartigue​, and Reggie Wilson and has performed in well known venues such as the Théatre de la Ville in Paris and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

Since 2010, Gbeffa has been developing his own movement vocabulary, creating collaborative works in Benin, Brazil, and throughout Europe. Always looking to invent new forms, his artistic approach is inspired and nourished by the traditional dances, rites, and rhythms of his Beninese culture and is hybridized through encounters, collaborations and influences from other disciplines. Contemporary art emerging from Beninese traditions and cults is one of his reservoirs of inspiration.

Recent major works include DIDE, a piece co-created with French visual artist Sarah Trouche which questions the place of women in society in Africa and in the world. Meanwhile, his meeting with the performer Violaine Lochu at ‘The Center’ in Cotonou, Benin, during a joint residence during the winter of 2021 gave birth to AWOLI. He also created Mémoire d’Océan, a video installation which is a dialogue between the souls of enslaved Africans who died during the transatlantic slave trade and the souls of the young African people who die today while crossing the ocean to reach Europe. Since 2021, with the support of the French Institute of Benin and the New Aquitaine Region Fund, he has been working with the performer and visual artist Violaine Lochu on Hòxo. The piece offers a futuristic vision between the intertwined histories of France and Benin via slavery and colonization through Twinning and the Vodoun Hóho cult. In 2023, he will present Chuthulucene, a collaboration with saxophonist Clement Duthoit around the work of Donna Haraway.​

Marcel has been working with ANIKAYA Artistic Director Wendy Jehlen since 2016 in projects including Forest, Conference of the Birds, and Run Like a Girl, a workshop they have co-taught in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso and Brazil since 2017.

Danang Pamungkas

Danang Pamungkas was born in Solo, Indonesia. He studied traditional Javanese dance at the Mangkunegaran Palace of Surakarta, and graduated from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta. From 2008-2011, Danang was a member of the renowned Cloud Gate Dance Company of Taiwan under artistic director Lin Hwai Min. 

Danang received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council for a 6 month residency program in New York City and a fellowship for a 6-week summer choreography program at American Dance Festival in Durham, NC in 2016.

Danang’s own choreography includes “Panyot Pun Padam, “ which was awarded First Prize at The Next Wave Indonesian Choreographer in Jakarta, and performed at the 2004 Surabaya Art Festival; a Beat Project Grant from Kelola Foundation performed at Teater Arena Taman Budaya Jawa Tengah In Surakarta (2011) and Salihara Theatre Jakarta also performed at Indonesian Dance Festival 2012 in Jakarta. He has collaborated as a choreographer with Indonesian director and filmmaker Garin Nugroho on “Opera Jawa Selendang Merah“ performed in Jakarta Theatre. 

Other projects include (2013) “A Part of Passion” performed at Teater Arena Taman Budaya Surakarta. (2013) Festival Salihara Jakarta (2014) “Break the Harmony” at the Welt Museum Impulstanz Festival 2013 in Vienna; “Fly on the Earth” at the Welt Museum Vienna Austria (2013); Residence program from Austrian Ministry of Education Vienna Austria (2013); “ANGST ANGEL; Return” a collaboration with Alex Dea and Maya Dance Theatre, Singapore (2014); “ Whispering of” performed at M1 Open Stage National Museum Singapore (2015); “In one/two world(s)” at Cornell University (2016); choreography of the Silent Film “Satan Jawa” directed by Garin Nugroho (2017); “Kabar Senja” at Taman Budaya Jawa Tengah in Surakarta (2021); “Ruang Bawah” Rumah Banjarsari Studio Surakarta and Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta (2022) “A Quest for Relationship: Island by choreographer Wang Yeu-kwn in Weiwuing Kauhsiong, Taiwan (2022).

Danang has been working with ANIKAYA since 2018 as an ensemble member of Conference of the Birds and is now developing a new work, T(h)ree with ANIKAYA. 

Yasin Anar

Yasin Anar is a contemporary dancer based in Istanbul. He is a graduate of the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatory in Contemporary Dance and holds a Master Trainer certificate in Turkish traditional folk dance. Yasin has performed with numerous contemporary dance companies both in Turkey and abroad, including the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet Modern Dance Company, Istanbul Contemporary Ballet Company, Hodjapasha Dance Theatre, DEF Dance Company, and the UK-based Aakash Odedra Dance Company. At MDT Istanbul, he has worked with renowned choreographers such as Beyhan Murphy, İhsan Rüstem, Andonis Foniadakis, Evrim Akyay, Alper Marangoz, Michael Popper, and Aysun Aslan. In addition to his role as a soloist in many productions, he also served as one of the principal soloists in Aysun Aslan’s production of Jizel. He has also been a creative dancer in works by artists such as Sagi Gross and Korhan Başaran at Akbank Sanat. Since 2016, Yasin has been working as a teacher, choreographer, and dancer at Istanbul Dance Factory and has toured the Balkans and Europe with the Zümrüt-ü Anka project. In 2024, he performed a solo piece with his own choreography during the closing show of the Saudi Pro League final match in Riyadh. With the Aakash Odedra Company, Yasin performed in Je Suis, touring worldwide in countries such as Germany, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom, including performances at prestigious venues like Sadler’s Wells. In 2019, he took part as both a choreographer and dancer in the Mosaic project, which was presented at the Effekte Science Festival in Karlsruhe, Germany, bridging the worlds of art and science. Yasin has danced with ANIKAYA since 2018.

Ching-I Chang

Made in Taiwan, active in America and quiet places. MFA. She has a deep love for dance and nurturing harmony. She has danced for Susan Marshall, Gesel Mason, Punchdrunk, and many brilliant artists. She was an original cast member of Sleep No More NYC; as well as a rehearsal director of SNM Shanghai. Most recently, she has toured with ANIKAYA to Palestine and African countries. Along with performing, teaching has been her sacred process of learning. She was a visiting professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and an adjunct at U of California San Diego. She is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, Yoga and Yoga Nidra Facilitator. She has bathed in contact improvisation, meditation and yoga since 2005 with occasional teaching and sharing with others. In her free time, she practices calligraphy, plays with voices, and makes bad art. And she loves bananas.

Yousef Sbeih

Yousef Sbeih is a dancer and performer from Jerusalem, Palestine. In 2015, he received a BA degree in Marketing & Business from Birzeit University while simultaneously joining the Austrian non-profit organisation Yantè to become a Community Dance Trainer. He and his colleagues led collaboration efforts with the Palestinian Ministry of Education to integrate a program that teaches non-violent communication skills and physical learning for local school students and the differently-abled.

In 2017, he moved to Norway to pursue a career in performing arts after receiving an apprenticeship with the Norwegian national company of contemporary dance Carte Blanche. He took part in various productions of the company, performing in different cities in Norway, Holland, and Germany.

Since 2018, he has worked as a freelance dancer, collaborating with different choreographers and companies in Palestine and abroad. In 2021 he completed his degree at the National Academy of Dance in Rome. He currently lives between Palestine and Denmark.