Video
Children of Dharma trailer
Ananta, The Eternal Trailer
Upcoming Tour Dates
|
Wed, September 3, 2025 |
Western Arts Alliance Showcase Ananta, The Eternal |
Los Angeles, CA |
Sat, October 25, 2025 |
Broad Stage Ananta, The Eternal |
Santa Monica, CA |
Sat, January 31, 2026 |
Rowan University Sacred Earth |
Glassboro, NJ |
Please check back soon for newly announced tour dates!
High-resolution photos are not available on this webpage. To access high resolution images or technical specifications for this artist send an email to: info@elsieman.org, be sure to include which artist you are interested in!
Press
“Ragamala’s creative and intelligent collaborations bring a contemporary lens and thoughtful awareness to the mythology and ritual of their Hindu ancestry and culture, making it accessible to a larger public.”
—dance writer Karen Greenspan
full article (PDF)
“‘Fires of Varanasi’ cultivated a sense of shared humanity through their nested narratives of resilience and healing…”
– Tatum Lindquist, The Daily
full article (PDF)
“Ragamala conveys beauty through mastery of technique”
– Sheila Regan, Star Tribune
full article (PDF)
“The eye often goes straight to Ms. Ramaswamy’s impeccable technique and incandescent beauty. Through her dancing, the music’s textures come into view.”
– Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
full article (PDF)
More Press
“There is something transcendent that makes its way to the music and movement.”
-The National
full article (PDF)
“For one hour we are transported into an exquisite dream state, one that exists deep in the heart of night.”
-Caroline Palmer, Star Tribune
full article (PDF)
“Aparna Ramaswamy is a vision of sculptural lucidity whose dancing brings a full-bodied awareness to complex rhythms and shifts of dynamics.”
– Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
“Aparna Ramaswamy graced the stage with vibrancy, energy, and light…she introduced audiences to [Bharatanatyam] in a most spectacular way.”
– BroadwayWorld.com
full article (PDF)
“‘Song of the Jasmine’ [is] a soulful, imaginative and rhythmically contagious collaboration with the superb jazz composer and alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa.”
–New York Times
full article (PDF)
“That’s when the magic of ‘Song of the Jasmine’ reveals itself — the relationship between the music and dance in this work is not only meant to be, it exemplifies what happens when artistic boundaries (real or artificial) are radically tested, if not knocked down all together.”
-Star Tribune
full article (PDF)
“A marvel of bouyant agility and sculptural clarity”
–Dance Magazine
“Ramaswamy appears to be inexhaustible, an elegant blaze of energy, capable of throwing her focus with equal intensity to the magnetic poles”
– EyeOnDance.org
Dance Teacher Magazine: An Indian Dance Matriarchy in Minneapolis
Chicago Tribune: Dance Top Ten for 2015: Women had an outsized role on this year’s list
- Sacred Earth
- Let The Crows Come
- Fires of Varanasi
- Children of Dharma
- Invisible Cities
- Ananta, The Eternal
Sacred Earth explores the interconnectedness between human emotions and the environments that shape them. Performed with live music, the dancers create a sacred space to honor the divinity in the natural world and the sustenance we derive from it. Inspired by the philosophies behind the ephemeral arts of kolam and Warli painting and the Tamil Sangam literature of India, Sacred Earth is co-Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy’s singular vision of the beautiful, fragile relationship between nature and man.
Ashwini Ramaswamy’s dancing “weaves together the human and the divine” – The New York Times
Evoking mythography and ancestry, “Let the Crows Come” uses the metaphor of crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed. This dance for three with live music explores how memory and homeland channel guidance and dislocation. Featuring Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam technique), Alanna Morris-Van Tassel (Contemporary/Afro-Caribbean technique), and Berit Ahlgren (Gaga technique), Bharatanatyam dance is deconstructed and recontextualized to recall a memory that has a shared origin but is remembered differently from person to person. Composers Jace Clayton (dj/rupture) and Brent Arnold extrapolate from Prema Ramamurthy’s classical Carnatic (South Indian) score, utilizing centuries-old compositional structures as the point of departure for their sonic explorations. “Let the Crows Come” premiered in November, 2019 and is available for touring with NDP touring subsidy.
Click here for a more detailed description.
Rooted in the expansive South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, Ragamala Dance Company manifests a kindred relationship between the ancient and the contemporary. In evening-length performance, “Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim,” eleven dancers conjure a realm where time is suspended and humans merge with the divine, framed by a stunning set & lighting design by Willy Cessa. Award-winning creators Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy imagine a metaphorical crossing place that enters into a ritualistic world of immortality, evoking the birth-death-rebirth continuum in Hindu thought to honor immigrant experiences of life and death in the diaspora.
With lead commissioning by The Kennedy Center, “Fires of Varanasi” received its outdoor premiere at The Kennedy Center’s REACH on Sept 11, 2021 and its indoor premiere at co-commissioner Hopkins Center at Dartmouth on Sept 17, 2021 before re-opening co-commissioner The Joyce Theater (from industry covid closures) for a week of shows, Sept 22 -26, 2021. “Fires of Varanasi” has been presented by co-commissioners: The Harris Theater in Chicago; The Northrop in Minneapolis; and The Soraya in Northridge, CA. This summer, it will be presented by co-commissioner the American Dance Festival. In the 22/23 season, it will be presented by co-commissioner Meany Center in Seattle as well as by Performing Arts Houston and the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ.
Click here for a more detailed description.
“‘Fires of Varanasi’ cultivated a sense of shared humanity through their nested narratives of resilience and healing…”
– Tatum Lindquist, The Daily
full article (PDF)
Children of Dharma was developed in response to crises over the ages: environmental devastation, unjust wars, family separations, violence towards women.
In Hinduism, human life, like the natural world, is cyclical. This work invites audiences to contemplate our relationship with nature, with each other, and the enduring power of ancient wisdom to navigate contemporary questions of conscience. Defining dharma as the dynamic choices and subsequent destinies of life—forever sprouting, transforming, dissolving and renewing—Children of Dharma explores three characters from the Hindu epic The Mahabharata: a god moving through the beauty and brutality of the human realm; a betrayed wife unleashing her fury; a mother, hardened by contempt, reckoning with her role in the death of her sons.
The brilliant scenic and lighting design of visual artist Willy Cessa (renowned for his work with Compagnie C de la B) creates a range of evocative landscapes, from the ancient temples and kingdoms of India to the starkness of a post-war battlefield. An original recorded score by powerhouse musicians from India highlights the hand-in-hand relationship of Bharatanatyam with Carnatic music. And poetic movement integrates intimate solos with ensemble choreography for Ragamala’s seven dancers, channeling South Indian culture to unearth some of the most enduring questions of conscience facing humanity. 72-minutes in length, Children of Dharma is a full-length work that tours with a total of 11 people.
A reimagining of Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel of the same title, Invisible Cities interweaves cultural perspectives with choreography by a dynamic group of lead artists across dance legacies: Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam), Berit Ahlgren (Gaga), Alanna Morris (African Diaspora/Modern), Joseph Tran (Breaking)—and visual artist, Kevork Mourad. Mourad’s interactive, immersive projections are both haunting and hopeful, creating a dynamic and unpredictable dimension to the artists’ examination of the way our built environment and human life interact.
Through percussive and expressive dance, Ananta, The Eternal describes the eternal relationship between the deity and the devotee. The sacred is present in this auspicious moment; through the meeting of the eyes, one gains the grace of the divine. Performed by sisters Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy, Ananta can be accompanied by extraordinary musicians from Chennai, India, extending dialogues of improvisation and abstraction in dance. (And this work can be presented with a recorded score.) Lighting design is by the celebrated French designer, Willy Cessa. 60 minutes in length
Bios
Founded in 1992 and acclaimed as one of the Indian Diaspora’s leading dance ensembles, Ragamala Dance Company seamlessly carries the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam into the 21st century. Informed by the echoing past and the fleeting present, Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy’s evocative choreography defies chronology.
Ranee and Aparna — mother and daughter — are protégés of the legendary dancer and choreographer Alarmel Valli, known as one of India’s greatest living masters. They embrace the philosophy, spirituality, myth and mysticism of their heritage to create not works but worlds – visceral, universal experiences that use Indian art forms to express their contemporary point of view. They see the classical form as a dynamic, living tradition with vast potential to convey timeless themes and present-day ideas.
Ragamala Dance Company has toured extensively, highlighted by performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, Music Center in Los Angeles, CA, Getty Center in Los Angeles, CA, Krannert Center in Urbana, IL, Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, Bali Arts Festival in Indonesia, and National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, India.
Aparna Ramaswamy (Artistic Director/ Choreographer/ Principal Dancer), was born in India and raised in the United States. She is a protégé of legendary Bharatanatyam artist Alarmél Valli, one of India’s greatest living masters. Described as “a marvel of buoyant agility and sculptural clarity” (Dance Magazine), “thrillingly three-dimensional,” and “an enchantingly beautiful dancer,” (The New York Times), Aparna and has been featured at prestigious venues throughout the United States and abroad, both as a soloist and as principal dancer with Ragamala.
She has been awarded several honors, including two McKnight Artist Fellowships, a Bush Fellowship, an Arts and Religion grant funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, two Jerome Foundation Travel Study Grants, an Artist Exploration Fund grant from Arts International, the Lakshmi Vishwanathan Endowment Prize from Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (Chennai, India), and the Sage Award for Best Dancer (Minneapolis). Aparna’s work is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Dance Project, and the Japan Foundation, and has been commissioned by the American Composer’s Forum, the Walker Art Center and the Southern Theater. In 2010, she was the first Bharatanatyam artist to be selected as one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. Aparna and co-Artistic Director Ranee Ramaswamy were recently named the 2011 “Artist of the Year” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Ranee Ramaswamy (Founder, Artistic Director/ Choreographer/ Principal Dancer), has been a master teacher and performer of Bharatanatyam in the U.S. since 1978. Since her first cross-cultural collaboration with poet Robert Bly in 1991, followed by her founding of Ragamala in 1992, she has been a pioneer in the establishment of non-Western dance traditions in Minneapolis and in pushing the boundaries of Indian classical dance on the global scene.
Among her many awards are 14 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Choreography and Interdisciplinary Art, a Bush Fellowship for Choreography, an Artist Exploration Fund grant from Arts International, two Cultural Exchange Fund grants from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and the 2011 McKnight Foundation Distinguished Artist Award. Most recently, Ranee was the recipient of a 2012 United States Artists Fellowship, and was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Council on the Arts.
