Artistic Director, ANIKAYA ANIKAYA technique (USA)

Wendy Jehlen

Her career has been marked by international explorations, study and creative collaboration. She received her Bachelor’s degree in ritual and performance from Brown University and her Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on performance and religion in the former Persian world. Her unique approach to choreography incorporates elements of Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Capoeira, Kalaripayattu, West African dance, Butoh, and a wide-range of Contemporary movement forms. Her emotionally powerful choreography has been created and performed in the US, Canada, France, Italy, India, Japan, Benin, Brazil, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa, Palestine and Turkey. Works include The Women Gather (2022), a post-modern ritual movement opera developed exclusively with women-identifying artists; Breath(less) (2021), a solo for two dancers; Conference of the Birds (2018) a multi-media dance theater work created in collaboration with artists from 10 countries and Migrations (2019), a companion piece to Conference of the Birds re-created in communities on tour; Delicateness in Times of Brutality (2017), an evolving duet with Japanese Deaf Butoh artist Dakei; Entangling (2015), a duet with Burkinabe choreographer Lacina Coulibaly inspired by Quantum Entanglement; The Deep (2015), a work for 25 dancers created in São Paulo, Brazil, Lilith (2013), a solo on the first woman; The Knocking Within (2012), an evening-length duet on a disintegrating relationship; Forest (2010), a journey through the archetypal forest; He Who Burns (2006), a trio on the figure of Iblis (Satan); Breathing Space (2003), a collaboration with Japanese choreographer Hikari Baba in Tokyo; Crane (2002), based on images from Japanese Buddhist poetry; and Haaaa (2002), inspired by the experience of childbirth. Jehlen has received support from the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Theater Communications Group, the Japan Foundation, the Boston Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Network of Ensemble Theaters, National Performance Network, Boston Center for the Arts., Massachusetts Cultural Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, Boston Dance Alliance, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the National Endowment for the Arts, US Embassies in Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Japan, Mexico, Rwanda and South Africa among others. She is an Arts Envoy of the US Department of State, a Fulbright Scholar and former Fulbright Specialist and is on the Speaker Roster of African Regional Services.

Director, Multicorps. Lead Artist, ANIKAYA. Contemporary African Dance (Benin)

Marcel Gbeffa

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.

Lead Artist, ANIKAYA. Bharatanatyam. Kalaripayattu (South Africa)

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.

Lead Artist, ANIKAYA. Dynamic Flow (Egypt)

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.

Associated Artist, Multicorps. Ensemble Member, ANIKAYA. Traditional Beninese Dance (Benin)

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.