Quimera was founded by Anandha Ray in 2013 as a training and performance group. Having just retired from her professional modern dance career directing a company that toured extensively, both nationally and internationally, Ray was beginning to dive further into the study of ritual and ceremony in dance. Drawing upon these studies, combined with her extensive experience and education in dance, she created an innovative form to train dancers for Quimera Ritual Dance (the form formally known as Shamanic Fusion Dance).

With its distinct style of channeling healing dance experiences for the performer and viewer, she kept creating dances that dove further and further into the presentation of ritual and ceremony on the stage – not as performance, but as actual ritual and ceremony. In her 30 year career in dance she created dances that were healing to viewers, but it would not have been appropriate to speak about that aspect of the work. In 2013 she began to openly talk about this process–dance as the Medicine of Movement.

Soon others were called to dance with her and she began an intensive training and performance group. During this time, Anandha dove deeper into understanding the connection of the Goddess Isis (a Goddess of dance) and undertook a year of study to become legally ordained as a Priestess of Isis. Once ordained, her elder suggested Anandha invite her dancers to study under her to become Priestesses. They all surprised her by saying “Yes!” and thus began the first year-long course of study to ordain the first priestesses of Quimera and the Iseum of Quimera was founded.

The Iseum of Quimera is a community of legally ordained Priestessed who utilize Quimera Method, a ritualistic and ceremonial dance form, as Reverend Priestesses of the Goddess Isis. We focus on the Medicine of Movement as a healer of souls, a pathway to understand one’s authentic self, and to express that through dance. The work we do is a means of serving the world through dance. It is a school where we all teach each other… where we wield our own gifts and talents as well as each of us leading ceremonies, performances, classes and rituals through Quimera Ritual Dance. It is a community based on theories of non-duality, on holding the shadow as equal to the light. It is commitment to learning to be honest and true to our inner calling while living fully integrated lives with the highest integrity. Quimera is a community where we do not have to be perfect… where we are all in process and are valued for our authentic self.

Through this amazing connection, we learn to channel performances that are authentic, creative, and fearless. We create and participate in ceremonies both locally and internationally that reveal the blocks to our creativity and that sabotage our success. We dismantle the blocks to embrace the skill, dedication, courage and abilities to become a ritual dancer and teacher. And then we go out into the world and share this healing with others.