Ragamala Dance Company Announces 2021-22 Season

Ragamala Dance Company - Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy, Artistic Directors - announces its 2021-22 season, featuring the world premiere of Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim, performances of Ashwini Ramaswamy's Let the Crows Come, podcast episodes, and panel appearances. The Company will tour the country through April 2022 and will conclude the season with a residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco, Italy.

Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy's award-winning, internationally recognized bharatanatyam dance ensemble will perform the world premiere of the Kennedy Center co-commission Fires of Varanasi on the REACH campus from September 11-12 as part of the Center's 50th Anniversary weekends and Millennium Stage Summer Series, before bringing the piece to The Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College on September 17-18 and The Joyce Theater in Manhattan from September 22-26.

"soulful, imaginative and rhythmically contagious...

every gesture radiates joy or generosity or a sense of striving toward some higher form of being."

- The New York Times

Rooted in the expansive South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, Ragamala Dance Company manifests a kindred relationship between the ancient and the contemporary. In their latest 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. 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. The work features an original, recorded score and the lighting designs of French scenic and lightning designer Willy Cessa.

Evoking mythography and ancestry, Ashwini Ramaswamy's Let the Crows Come uses the metaphor of crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed. This 60-minute work for three dancers with live music ex-plores how memory and homeland channel guidance and dislocation. Featuring Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam technique), Alanna Morris-Van Tassel (Contemporary/Afro-Caribbean Diasporic technique), and Berit Ahlgren (Gaga tech-nique), 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 original Carnatic (South Indian) score, utilizing centuries-old com-positional structures as the point of departure for their sonic explorations.

2021/2022 SEASON SCHEDULE:

Returning to the Earth (Virtual event)

Pre-filmed online performance and panel discussion as part of the Just Festival in Edinburgh

August 25, 2021 at 1:30PM ET, Edinburgh, Scotland

Register for free

World premiere of Fires of Varanasi

September 11 and 12, 2021 at 7:30 PM, the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. 

Register for free

(Rain Date: September 13 at 7:30 PM)

Fires of Varanasi (proscenium stage premiere)

September 17 at 7:30 PM and 18 at 2 & 7:30 PM ET, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

Fires of Varanasi (New York premiere)

September 22-26, 2021, The Joyce Theater

Tickets

Let the Crows Come

October 2, 2021, Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series in Pennsylvania

Tickets

Let the Crows Come

November 20 and 21, 2021, Cowles Center in Minneapolis

Fires of Varanasi

December 2, 2021 at 7:30PM, Harris Theater, Chicago, IL 

Tickets

Subcontinuity: Voices from the South Asian Diaspora podcast launches via PRX

January 2022

Let the Crows Come

January 15, 2022 at 8PM, Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale, AZ

Tickets

Release of second Subcontinuity podcast episode

February 2022

Ashwini Ramaswamy's work-in-process work Invisible Cities Panel Discussion and Artist Q&A

January 31, 2022

Fires of Varanasi 

February 26, 2022, Northrop in Minneapolis

Tickets

Fires of Varanasi

April 9, 2022, The Soraya in North Ridge, CA

Ramaswamys in residence

April 19-May 20, 2022, The Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco, Italy

About the Ragamala Dance Company

Ragamala Dance Company was founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy and is under the leadership of Artistic Directors Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy, and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters). Rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, the company has been hailed by The New York Times as "rapturous and profound.” Driven by the artistic vision of Ranee and Aparna, Ragamala Dance Company is the embodiment of an

immigrant story. The company's work—on stage, in the community, and educating the next generation exemplifies the intercultural narratives of countless global citizens and evokes a shared sense of humanity. Ragamala engages in a collaborative practice rooted in the idea of Bharatanatyam as a sacred and dynamic living tradition. They embody the kindred relationship between ancient and contemporary that is urgently needed in today's world. Ranee and Aparna's training under legendary artist Alarmel Valli forms the bedrock of a creative aesthetic that springs from beauty, truth, and spirit. Ragamala is a pioneering, woman-led, intergenerational, family-run organization committed to the idea that while history is time bound, the stories we share are timeless. For more information, visit ragamaladance.org.