MINDFUL SPACE-MAKING: Crossing Boundaries with Ananya Dance Theatre

STAGING AN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL IN ETHIOPIA BY INVITING companies like Ananya Dance Theatre signifies precarious but meaningful crossings since it took place amid the state-sanctioned primordial identity politics that obliterated trans-sectional (beyond any ethnocentric model of identity) epistemologies of social justice. My reflective fragmentary stories engage with the tensions in these multiple crossings. The Crossing Boundaries (CB) festival-conference took place on September 23–27, 2015, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Initiated by three Ethiopian performing artists, Azeb Worku, Meaza Worku, and myself, CB was organized by the Ethiopian Theatre Professionals’ Association. It was one of the events that were staged in