(India/Germany) / (China/Germany)
Nyota lnyoka, a dancer of colour was born in colonial Paris in 1896 and passed away in 1971. Her existence and work inherently crossed boundaries: social, temporal, and artistic. As a dancer of mixed heritage in European modernism, she navigated identity by inventing personas and addressing various audiences, from the past to the future. Though her success largely fell within the exotic and colonial categories, Nyota pushed beyond these constraints. She developed the Clef des attitudes et du geste esthetique (CdA), a compositional movement system based on abstraction, anatomical articulations, and body postures. Drawing from non-European aesthetic systems like the Natyashastra and Abhinayadarpana, she adapted them into a modern European framework, aiming to create a universal system applicable across disciplines, including dance, film, sculpture, and painting. Despite her innovative vision, her system and extensive artistic writings – poems, libretti, and theoretical works – did not gain recognition during her lifetime, despite her efforts to publish and exhibit them. Nyota’s radical approach continues to resonate today. Dance with the Stars #1, a collaboration between musicians, costume designers, and choreographer-dancers Hannah Ma and Sandra Chatterjee, engages with Nyota’s CdA, tracing her messages and bringing them into dialogue with contemporary border-crossing, mixed-heritage realities. This performance reflects on her legacy as a transdisciplinary artist and a BiPOC pioneer in European modernism, whose work challenges conventional narratives and highlights overlooked artistic contributions. Through this lens, Nyota’s work gains historical significance, illuminating the invisible practices of marginalised artists in Europe.
Sandra Chatterjee is a choreographer and scholar in Culture & Performance/ Dance Studies who, explores innovative audience engagement by incorporating overlooked sensory dimensions like smell into her work, addressing their political aspects. Recent projects include SWEAT – Smells of Labour, Smells of Racism, Dance with the Stars #1, and Noor lnayat Khan: Performance Miniatures. She co-organizes the platform CHAKKARs – Moving Interventions and co-edits its eZine (Moving Interventions). Notable publications include “Evocations of the Sun in Modernity” (Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, 2024), “Writing for Change” (Routledge Handbook of Music and Migration, 2023), and “Von Spannungen, Widerspruchen und einem double bind” (Double Bind postkolonial, transcript Verlag, 2023).
Hannah Ma is a bold feminist choreographer and founder of hannahmadance, an interdisciplinary company launched in 2015. Working across Germany, Luxembourg, and South Africa, her art tackles gender, race, colonialism, and identity through dance, installation, spoken word, and visual art. Rooted in feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial thought, Ma’s performances challenge power structures and center marginalized voices. Her works, like INVASIONS!, use movement as a form of resistance and radical transformation, envisioning a world of justice and equality. Ma is also a founding member of United Networks, a nonprofit uniting racialised and marginalised artists and activists in Germany, and serves as director of The People United in Luxembourg.