We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chitra Subramanian a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Chitra, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

My name is Chitra Subramanian and I am a Washington, DC-based dance artist and educator. I have been dancing all of my life, starting as a young 7-year old child. I was trained in a South Indian Classical dance form called Bharathanatyam. I studied this under the teaching of Jaya Mani at the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh.

Later on, in college and beyond, I was introduced to Hip-Hop culture through the club and party – and the relationships I forged here led me to my practice and learning of Hip-Hop and street dance styles. In recent years, as I have delved into performance and choreography, I have focused on bringing together my Indian Classical foundations with my love for Hip-Hop culture.

For me, within these styles, the most important way to to build knowledge and skills is to engage meaningfully in community and relationship building. Being powerfully tied to the communities that represent the culture with authenticity is key to building your own knowledge base and personal connection to the craft. Yes, the dance steps and technique are important – but I find that what’s more important is to be a part of community and the culture these dances come from. Oftentimes people don’t focus on this and rather get right into outcome and production of work rather than interrogating process and where we spend our time to develop our knowledge base and ties to the culture.

Chitra, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Chitra Subramanian and I am a DC-based dance artist and educator. I draw from the spirit of Hip-Hop culture and Indian Classical dance to explore themes centered on community, relationships, and institution. My purpose is to create and share for the everyday person. As I create art, I am constantly thinking about my 10-year old neighbors, and the young people and their families I worked with from Barry Farms, Condon Terrace, and Uptown, and so many others in DC. From my perspective, if those folks are not helping to drive art in our city, we’re failing in our mission.

While my training in Bharatanatyam grounded me in my community and culture, the institution of Hip-Hop played a transformative role in developing my purpose, values, and forged a life-long love for DC. It was through the local DC Hip-Hop club scene that I found my calling for dance and youth work (I ran a DC-based nonprofit, M.O.M.I.E’s, for over a decade, building life-long relationships with young people and their families). These relationships have been an essential part of my dance work. My dance aesthetic and movement languages deeply reflect my groundings in Bharatanatyam and Hip-Hop culture. My creative and choreographic process draws from these movement languages to offer a unique, non-mainstream style of movement not often seen in our dance spaces.

My ambitions and vision as an artist is to bring together innovation in dance performance/choreography with my social justice education experience, to create powerful, relevant works that tell universal stories – and to share with audiences not traditionally reflected in our arts spaces. My aim is to make chitra.MOVES a vessel for deep community engagement and relationships building, and achieving this through performance/choreography; teaching/education; and the sharing of social justice themes and stories. Communities I am particularly connected with in DC include: Young people and their families/elders; Women and femmes in DC Hip-Hop; Young artists of color building dance performance experience; and grassroots people-of-color led organizations digging deep in community work.

For this reason, My current research explores the power of institutions to create change in our communities as well as the devastating consequences when vibrant institutions are missing or failing. My evening-length production, TEMPLE, which was recently presented at Dance Place, begins to explore these questions by shining the spotlight on the fraying of public life and the growing reality that people participate in institutions less and less. Through the language of Indian Dance and Hip-Hop culture, TEMPLE explores the experiences and stories of a South Asian immigrant journey through the lens of pivotal institutions, including my childhood Hindu Temple and the “Temple” of the DC Club. This project pulls from my social justice work with youth, relationship to the Club, and my love for telling stories through different movement roots and inspirations. The work incorporated archival research, including filming, interviews, and the gathering of content, to convey a special and unique time in DC Hip-Hop. I collaborated with local artists including DJs, producers, and creators, who were an integral part of the scene during that time to help bring this story to life on stage. The engagement and relationships with communities I deeply care about in DC are the driving force and inspiration of my dance works.

This funding support comes at a critical time in my dance journey. As an independent artist and educator, I am at a point in my career where I am developing systems and processes needed for stability, including establishing a robust financial management system, clearly developing a fundraising and income-generating strategy, and building the brand around my collective, chitra.MOVES. This support will allow me to spend time in solidifying and investing in these systems and better position myself to create art and build community. My long-term vision with this work is to build chitra.MOVES to become a pioneer in movement innovation, including touring work, developing intergenerational education programs, and traveling globally to offer residencies and engage in creative collaborations with other artists.

With this intention, I take pride in my recent successes. In the past 7 years, I have performed more than I ever have, elevated my training with greater focus, developed my aesthetic, and created/performed new works, including the evening-length work TEMPLE, which sold out three shows with standing-room only and significant waitlists. This dedication of time and discipline has helped me gain so many skills while also identifying areas where I need to grow. Ultimately, I want my career to meaningfully integrate the following in a sustained, healthy, and joyful way: Performance; Choreography; Teaching; and Social Justice Education for children.

My dance works have been shown in at various festivals and venues including:
Dance Place; Global Perspectives Festival (DC); National Dance Day at Kennedy Center REACH; and Joe’s Movement Emporium. I have also performed projects with local artists and groups in the DMV and regionally, including: Dance Place’s District Choreographer’s Festival with Heart Stuck Bernie; Simon Baron’s Arco Belo Jazz Ensemble; ROOTED at Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage with Project CHARMA; FUTURES Exhibition Opening Performance with Christopher K. Morgan & Artists; PearlPresents Dance Festival at New Hazlett Theater (Pittsburgh); Three Rivers Arts Festival (Pittsburgh; DanceUSADance via India’s ZeeTV (NYC); BMore Houseful’s Annual Showcase at Dance Loft; Guest Performer with Kalamandir Dance Company & Brinda Guha (NYC), and Hip Hop Artist, Bohemia.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I am a mom of two young girls, ages 11 and 8. Although I have been dancing all of my life, my commitment to dance and education as form of work has been recent. I consider my path pretty nontraditional. I also come from a career in youth development, which has anchored me in community. This foundation has helped me creatively in that it has offered me a path to tell stories that feel grounded in the relationships that make me who I am.

One story from my journey is my resilience and commitment to making dance my life even after having children and making the bold decision to leave my day-job to pursue dance full-time. If anything, as I grow older and deepen my self-awareness my urgency to create and dance has become more and more powerful. In fact, I love that I am now ready to commit and practice my craft full force, and now feels like the right time.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

As a dance artist that pulls from Indian Classical and Hip-Hop foundations, I am always driven by creating art for community and the everyday person. I driven by innovation – I want to produce work that no one has seen before. I want to create and share stories that feel universal, meaningful, and relevant. I want audiences to walk into the room feeling like they are seen and that they belong there.

My main goal and mission is to have my collective, chitra.MOVES a vessel – or a newly imagined institution – for deep community engagement and relationships building, and achieving this through performance/choreography and engaging unseen artists; teaching/education; and the sharing of social justice themes and stories within my creative and teaching work. chitra.MOVES as a change agent is working in service and in relationship with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.chitramoves.com
• Instagram: @chitra.moves
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chitramove
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chitra-subramanian-8490b870/
• Twitter: @chitramoves
• Youtube: @nohalfsteps1

Image Credits
Image credits: Jay Williams Jonathan Hsu Sarah Noelle