Ragamala Dance Company voted Best Dance Company - City Pages Best of 2018

Best of the Twin Cities 2018
City Pages
April 19, 2018
Original Article

Best Dance Company

Ragamala Dance Company

Ever innovative in advancing the 2,000-year-old South Indian temple dance bharatanatyam into 21st-century iterations that traverse boundaries, the 25-year-old Ragamala Dance Company reached an apotheosis with Written in Water. Ranee (mother) and Aparna and Ashwini (daughters) Ramaswamy are masters of their form, with individual inflections that differentiate their performances. This piece was based on the Indian board game Paramapadam (the forerunner of Chutes and Ladders) and the 12th-century Sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds,” which details a journey through the seven stages to Enlightenment. It also incorporated such multicultural, multidisciplinary influences as paintings by Keshav (from Chennai, India) projected on the floor, and live music led by Iraqi-American jazz artist Amir ElSaffar.