Artist Bio

Chitra Vairavan is an artist, seeker, contemporary indian dancer/choreographer and educator born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on occupied Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee land and culturally-grown as an artist in Mni Sota Makoce/Minnesota on occupied Dakota land for twenty years. With ancestral roots in Tamil Nadu, she is immersed in Tamil/Thamizh culture and progressive politics in the U.S. Her embodied practice and experimental process is rooted in deep listening, spatial observation, freedoms, poetry, vulnerability and ancestral memory. The aesthetic of her movement is through both yoga and contemporary indian dance forms – a mixture of training in Bharatanatyam and Odissi.

Her dance and performance work with Aniccha Arts and Ananya Dance Theatre earned her the 2015 Sage Award for Outstanding Performer, 2016 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Dance, and being named “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine in 2017 among other honors. As she journeys as an independent artist, choreographer and creative, she often shares her work with other artists, community members and friends/family along the way.

Through performance art fellowships and residencies like Pillsbury House Theater’s Naked Stages in 2018, Springboard for the Arts 20/20 fellowship in 2020/2021 and Rosy Simas Danse 331 Residency in 2022, Vairavan developed a transdisciplinary creative and choreographic practice which she shared through workshops, classes and one-to-one offerings. In 2024, Vairavan was recognized with and humbled by the 2024 McKnight Choreography Fellowship. Her work has been funded by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation and supported by artists, creatives and community members transnationally.

Vairavan received a B.A. in Spanish Studies and Strategic Communication from the University of Minnesota and an M.A. in Leadership and Public Policy from the University of St. Thomas, while working as a legal assistant in their law school for a decade and later other arts and social justice orgs.

Present Moments (a chronology)

After working with mentor Eiko Otake, for her 2016 McKnight Artist Fellowship, Vairavan began to create experimental dance works through site-specific and durational performance explorations. Vairavan was again invited to work with artist Eiko Otake during her 2019 residency in Macalester College, as part of Otake’s Duet Project. Her creative choices led her to receive the 2018 Naked Stages Fellowship for emerging choreographers/theatre artists, where she was mentored by Sharon Bridgforth and the team at Pillsbury House + Theatre.

In December 2019, Vairavan began sharing her performance methodology and creative thinking through a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)-centered creative liberation practice, called Balance + Boundaries, for artists of all disciplines seeking to explore and expound on their movement practices within their own work. The series also seeded an artist collective called The Vibrants in March 2020.

Over the pandemic, Vairavan had been on an extensive research and development process in a series of self-produced and developed fieldwork explorations as an artist/seeker. Most of the work is featured on her social media page and personal archive. In 2020-2021, she received (and was humbled by) the recognition of Springboard for the Arts’ 20/20 Artist Fellowship. The former fellowship supports BIPOC and Native artists who are creating tools, pathways and systems of support for artists in their communities.

Vairavan currently experiments in transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic work between music, poetry, visual art and dance primarily. As a 2024 McKnight Choreography Fellow, Vairavan continues exploring her choreographic practice in more depth while finding pathways of connecting and sharing.

Contemporary Foundations (a history)

Chitra Vairavan was born in Milwaukee, WI on occupied Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee land and raised in the north side of Milwaukee by two Tamil immigrant parents. She is a daughter, sister, aunt and artist. Vairavan has been dancing since the age of two and her parents instilled in her the importance of her cultural and linguistic roots as a Tamil/Thamizh person from birth. She comes from a family and community of Tamil/Thamizh educators, writers and poets. Art was a matter of survival in the American landscape from her beginnings. Her earlier dance teachers included Meena Baskaran and Hema Rajagopalan.

In 2004 during her undergraduate years, Vairavan met her contemporary dance mentor, Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, and a fierce group of women artists of color, through which she became a founding member of Ananya Dance Theatre. She completed 14 seasons with the company from 2004-2015, earning her much recognition as an artist and principal dancer for many years. Vairavan would simultaneously explore experimental dance/performance work further as a dance collaborator with Pramila Vasudevan’s Aniccha Arts since 2007 and as a part of Chamindika Wandarugala’s Monkeybear’s Hamolodic Workshop in 2017.