Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy’s Ragamala Dance Company has an enduring reput­­­­ation for revelatory community engagement activities, tailored to individual communities, interests, and experiences. At a time when the world is looking to artists to help process the seismic changes in our current lives and communities, Ragamala’s work is more important than ever. We remain rooted in Ragamala's core mission—to forge connections between people, ideas, disciplines, institutions, and communities. Now, we are developing new digital methods to host participatory activities, inclusive community dialogues, and performances designed to inspire a sense of purpose, reflection, connection, and resilience.

Please contact Erik Madsen-Bond for more information. We look forward to partnering with you to create new content for your community.

 
 

Digital Engagement Offerings


We are excited to work with our commissioning and presenting partners on online content for your community. Together with presenters across the country, Ragamala has created or is currently developing customized content including:

 

  • Live Q&As

  • Specially-recorded introductions or remarks

  • Outdoor, physically distanced live in-person performances

  • High quality professionally livestreamed performances

  • Live and/or pre-recorded rehearsal footage

  • Full-length interactive or pre-recorded Bharatanatyam master classes

  • Mini Bharatanatyam master classes, broken into multiple short, digestible segments for your audience to consume at their discretion.

  • Performance preview conversations

  • Cultural leadership lecture/discussion with students from multidisciplinary backgrounds, crossing entrepreneurship, arts administration, and studio and performing arts.

  • Interactive Bharatanatyam lecture-demonstration, with live demonstration and Q&A

  • Exclusive donor receptions, conversations, previews, etc.

Through these methods and more, Ragamala remains committed to working directly with you to develop engaging and meaningful experiences for your ticket holders, subscribers, donors, community members, students, community partners, etc. We strongly believe in the power, importance, and necessity of the arts to help our communities grapple and come to grips with our current reality. Ragamala’s core mission is and has always been to forge connections, and we look forward to working with you to further that mission in your community.

Past Digital Engagement Offerings

In 2020, Ragamala created personalized virtual experiences for
the Kennedy Center, The Hopkins Center for the Arts, Lincoln Center Education, Northrop,
and The Meany Center for the Performing Arts:

The Hop at Dartmouth’s Artists in Conversation:
Pico Iyer & Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/events/ranee-and-aparna-ramaswamy

In this meeting of minds (and mutual fandom), three leading members of the global Indian arts and culture community look at the way ancient traditions manifest themselves in the modern world. Taking questions from viewers through live chat, Ranee and Aparna present that pre-recorded conversation as well as sequences of Ragamala's interdisciplinary dance works.


Lineage
Concept by Ranee Ramaswamy, created by Ranee Ramaswamy and Caitlin Hammel
https://youtu.be/_9ipRp4LErY

Lineage is short film that offers a window into Ranee Ramaswamy’s relationship with the art form of Bharatanatyam since immigrating to Minneapolis in 1978. Lineage offers a visually dynamic narrative of one of the first Bharatanatyam lineages in the U.S.


Lincoln Center’s #ConcertsForKids
https://youtu.be/pcP2xZoc5yo

In this #ConcertsForKids experience, get an inside look as the Ramaswamys rehearse and explain how their approach to merging the tradition of an Indian dance form with their immigrant voices has created something unique and important in our complex world.


#KeepDancing Season Launch Kick-Off
https://youtu.be/D9WIgZPTChQ

A special virtual performance of excerpts from Fires of Varanasi. With the launch of our season, we celebrate live art and kick off a series of initiatives designed to inspire a sense of purpose, reflection, connection, and resilience.


THE MULTINATIONAL SOUL
Presented by Northrop and the kennedy center
https://youtu.be/kWJoPWh3iWY

Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy and renowned author Pico Iyer reflect on concepts of impermanence, joy, and sorrow through the lens of their shared Indian heritage.


TEDXMINNEAPOLIS
https://youtu.be/nUDzCx-Gug4

Ranee, Aparna, and Ashwini Ramaswamy share a series of solo performances as part of the TEDxMinneapolis 2020: Adaptation virtual sessions.


FOODS FOR THE SOULS 
in partnership with Northrop Presents
https://youtu.be/_0R0hrxG-SA

A cooking demonstration by James Beard Award-winning chef and author Raghavan Iyer, joined by Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy in a conversation about the interconnectedness of food, art, and ritual in India.


CULTIVATING CREATIVITY: A CONVERSATION ON ARTS AND CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
https://youtu.be/-SKTUqyBYCQ

Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy reflect upon their experience as pioneering women artists of color in Minnesota and provide vital insights for the next generation of cultural leaders.

2021 Calendar

 

January – February 2021 – Women and Dance in the Diaspora
Presented in partnership with Northrop (University of Minnesota)

Throughout history, dance has been a vehicle for immigrant communities to uphold the traditions of our birthplace and share them with our new neighbors. This in-person and livestreamed Bharatanatyam dance master class that uses movement as a vehicle for immigrant communities to uphold the traditions of our birthplace and share them with our new neighbors.

 

March 2021 – Returning to the Earth
Presented in partnership with Northrop (University of Minnesota)

Inspired by the passing of Ranee’s father in 2015 and the challenges as immigrants of maintaining our most important traditions in a new world, Ragamala and Northrop present an interfaith conversation on navigating life and death in the diaspora. This livestreamed and in-person (as safety measures allow) conversation features faith leaders and elders from Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Jewish traditions.

 

April 2021 – Sacred Geography
Presented in partnership with Northrop (University of Minnesota)

In a globalized world of fast-paced transformation, how do we draw from our embedded cultural knowledge to instill values of self-reflection, clarity of mind, harmony, and seeking? We invite the public to join us in constructing a large-scale, participatory floor installation in which we use the South Indian visual art form of kolam and ceramic lit lamps (diyas) as metaphors for pilgrimage and transcendence.