ANIKAI founder/artistic director, Wendy Jehlen is a choreographer of Contemporary Dance, whose work is based in her training in Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Capoeira, West African dance, American and European Modern and Contemporary dance styles. Jehlen's choreography incorporates her training in all of these dance forms.

Much of her work incorporates texts from around the world. Recent works include One (2004), an evening-length solo performance on solitude and traveling; Breathing Space (2003), a collaboration with Japanese choreographer Hikari Baba; Crane (2002), a twenty-five minute work for six dancers based on images from Japanese Buddhist poetry; Haaaa (2002), a dance for five dancers inspired by the experience of childbirth; Midnight (2000), based on a poem by Sufi saint Jelaluddin Rumi; Job 10 (1999), based on the tenth chapter of the Book of Job of the Hebrew Bible; and Becoming Fire (1998), an evening length work for two dancers and five musicians exploring texts from the Sufi traditions of Iran and South Asia. Another important element of Jehlen's work is collaboration with Deaf performers and poets. She is fluent in American Sign Language and uses both the language and aesthetic of American Sign Language poetry in her choreography, often collaborating with Deaf artists in the creation of bi-cultural works.

With composer Nandlal Nayak, Jehlen founded Akhra: The Dancing Grounds, a performance group which creates and performs experimental, multi-disciplinary works with artists from all over the world. Jehlen has performed her choreography throughout the United States, Europe, India and in Japan. She often collaborates with musicians and has worked with musicians from such diverse musical backgrounds as Jazz, Turkish and Indian classical and folk music, Afro-Peruvian percussion and singing, Ghanaian percussion, and Japanese koto and jushchigen, and with electronic musicians from Asia and the United States.

Jehlen has received funding and recognition for her choreography from the Artist Grants Program of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2001, 2003), the Senior Performing Artist Fellowship program of the American Institute of Indian Studies (2001), the Ford Foundation/Arts International (1996), the Puffin Foundation (2001), the Tokyo American Center (2002), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2005), among others. She has been granted a 2004-05 Fulbright Award for her project "Women on Stage," exploring the changing role and status of women dancers in India and the United States.

"gorgeous" – Theodore Bale, The Boston Herald

"magic" – Hindustan, India

"works wonders on the stage" - The Telegraph, India

"A journey of discovery...(Jehlen's) dance style is contemporary without its customary abstractness. The movements had an inbuilt rhythm and mood, often accompanied by symbolic gestures in sign language...the well choreographed, tightly knit movements were executed with discipline and professionalism." -The Hindu

“una suggestiva sequenza di immagini fusa con delicata maestria alla raffinata danza della bravissima Wendy Jehlen...”
“an expressive sequence of images fused with delicate mastery in the refined dance of the "bravissima" Wendy Jehlen..."- La Tribuna, Italy