Ashwini Ramaswamy, Let the Crows Come

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.

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“Ashwini Ramaswamy boldly explores what seemingly disparate genres of dance can do when performed side by side.” – Dance Magazine

Bharatanatyam choreographer and dancer Ashwini Ramaswamy deepens a choreographic methodology she began in 2019 with Let the Crows Come—named a “Best of the Year” in The Washington Post and a critic’s pick in The New York Times. Featuring 13 dancers, this reimagining of Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel interweaves cultural perspectives with a dynamic group of lead artists—Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam), Berit Ahlgren (Gaga), Alanna Morris (Modern), Joseph Tran (Breaking)—and visual artist, Kevork Mourad, who creates Invisible Cities’ interactive, immersive projections and illustrations in real time.

Invisible Cities extends beyond the kinetic realm with live, interactive projections created by internationally renowned artist Kevork Mourad. Mourad employs his technique of live drawing and animation, developing a collaboration in which art, music and movement harmonize with one another. Both haunting and hopeful, ethereal and full of depth, Mourad’s visual architectures provide a dynamic and unpredictable dimension to the artists’ examination of the way the built environment and human life interact.

Invisible Cities is a generative pilgrimage that expresses a lifelong desire to coalesce Ramaswamy’s specific artistic and cultural aesthetic as a Bharatanatyam artist with the dynamic universe of other embodied traditions and communities. Original choreographic approaches include: the transmuting of Bharatanatyam’s intricate gestural language (hastas/mudras) into full-body movement; creating an unexpected technique of movement modulation by reversing and decelerating Bharatanatyam sequences; utilizing the intricate and unique rhythmic structures of Bharatanatyam to inspire corporeal isolations and patterns; weaving spirituality and narrative elements into the choreographic marrow.

Read the Dance Magazine full article (PDF)