LA Dance Chronicle: Soraya Welcomes Ragamala's “Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim"
By Joanne DiVito
April 19, 2022
On April 9, 2022, the Soraya Center for the Performing Arts and Thor Steingraber: Artistic Director, welcomed the stunning Minneapolis based Ragamala Dance Company with the world premiere commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Arts at Cal State Northridge.
The mother and daughter team Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, internationally known and honored for their work in the contemporary Indian Classic Dance form of Bharatanatyam performed the Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim representing the ancient city of Varanasi, a sacred site for both Hindus and Buddhists.
Fires of Varanasi was created to honor Ranee’s personal experience of her grandfather’s journey away from his homeland. She reimagined it as a ritual evoking the endurance of birth, death, and rebirth, honoring and juxtaposing the immigrant experience in the diaspora with the sacred history of Varanasi.
The audience, upon entering the quiet hall with its reverential atmosphere and incensed-filled stage-space appeared to instantly create an ambience of expectation. Even though the lights were not lowered until a good 20 minutes into the performance, with audience scattered throughout the hall, there was a ritual that began with placing and lighting candles. One was aware that they were entering a spiritual invocation. The ritual, where time was suspended and humanity merges with the divine soon calmed the frenetic noises of the outside world.
Photo by Kyle Flubacker