It was one of the most enthusiastic audiences of the Intersections Festival that greeted “We Are Somebody’s Ancestors.” Featuring the work of choreographers Ishanathan Guteng, Lauren DeVera, Tim Huynh, Tulani Janae, and Anushka Raje, “We Are Somebody’s Ancestors” was a seamless blend of styles and ideas centered around the choreographers experience as children of immigrants.

…a seamless blend of styles and ideas…With it’s sophisticated structure, high quality of dancing, and cohesive curation, it is an impressive offering.

Rather than five separate works in a showcase format, the choreographers produced five continuous acts that seemed to exist within the same world. The performance opened with low blue light as dancers in twos and threes ambled across the stage in a pedestrian mull. One was dancing, two were arguing, and three were playing rock-paper-scissors. Raje, wandering through the crowd and observing, was the last to exit, looking wistfully over her shoulder as the lights faded. These pedestrian sections returned throughout the evening, separating the discrete work of individual choreographers.

Divided into many segments, one of my favorite moments in Guteng’s Act I (none of the individual works were named) came with the duet near the end of the act. The song was explicit, the lights were red, and the two dancers’ undulations and musicality were spectacular. As the song ended and the dancers separated, the lights went from a focused, red special on center to a diffuse dark blue across the stage.

DeVera’s Act Two followed, featuring excerpts from 2023’s “Reclaiming Us,” a film by David Dowling and directed by DeVera, which also included Huynh as a dancer. The second act opened with a clip of a family seated around a dining room table, dinner was being served, and grace was said. You could not hear what they were saying, but something happened. Tempers flared and glasses were thrown. Onstage, DeVera was slowly standing up. As the clip faded, DeVera’s dancing was fluid but restrained under softly shifting blue lights. Returning to the film, and then again to DeVera, “Act Two” found its way to a hopeful and empowering resolution, but it also had some of the evening’s most intimate and personal feeling moments.

Choreographed by Huynh, Act Three was a family portrait, focusing on a frustrated student. Wholesome, high-energy, and focused on framing regular moments through street dance, Act Three shared a vibe with last weekend’s performance at Intersections by New York-based street dance company Umami Playground. Huynh’s choreography and the dancers’ performance were more hard hitting and physically aggressive, but both also found moments of humor in the everyday. As Act Three began, a dancer sat at his laptop and became frustrated. As the beat dropped, he closed the computer and beat his fists on the table, drawing a chorus of sympathetic laughter from the audience.

Janae’s Act Four was the most phrase work-focused offering on the program. Featuring the smallest cast of only three dancers—Janae with Alyssa Flage and Kaylan Amber Walcott—it was textural and kaleidoscopic, blending an aggressive sharpness with a tender sinuousness. As the act came to a close, footage of Janae’s family dancing at a wedding played on the backdrop, anchoring the dancers to the their ancestors.

“We Are Somebody’s Ancestors” closed with Raje’s Act Five. It began with Raje seated in a spotlight upstage between two classically dressed Indian dancers, nascently mimicking their arm and hand gestures. With over a dozen dancers, Act Five had the largest cast. It quickly transitioned into powerful, hip hop grounded vocabulary that was dense with choreographic counterpoint. In the end, the two classically dressed dancers returned to the group. They gestured downstage, as if conducting the rest of the cast towards the audience. Staring into the lights, the dancers walked towards us and into the future as the lights faded.

“We are Somebody’s Ancestors” marks Raje’s directorial debut. With it’s sophisticated structure, high quality of dancing, and cohesive curation, it is an impressive offering.

Running Time: Approximately one hour with no intermission.