Ranee Ramaswamy
Founder, Founding Artistic Director, and Choreographer

Hailed by The New York Times as “a master of abhinaya… her careful art glimmers with the strangeness of the divine,” RANEE RAMASWAMY (Co-Creator/Choreographer/Principal Dancer) is Founding Artistic Director of Ragamala Dance Company. As a dancemaker, performer, and culture bearer, Ranee’s creative vision is driven by a profound commitment to the artistic lineage imparted to her through four decades of training under legendary Bharatanatyam dancer/choreographer Padmabhushan Smt. Alarmél Valli, intertwined with Ranee's pioneering spirit of innovation and collaboration across culture and discipline.

Since immigrating to the U.S. in 1978, Ranee has been a trailblazer, working tirelessly to create a place for her culturally rooted choreographic work on the major stages of the U.S. dance landscape. Her work has been commissioned and presented by the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Joyce Theater, Northrop, Walker Art Center, American Dance Festival, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, among many others, and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, MAP Fund, Wallace Foundation, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. In September 2021, Ranee’s Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim (created in collaboration with Aparna Ramaswamy) was selected to open the Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary celebration with an outdoor, site-specific performance.

Ranee serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship (Italy), Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship (Italy), United States Artists Fellowship, McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, Bush Choreography Fellowship, and 14 McKnight Fellowships for Choreography and Interdisciplinary Art, among many others. (www.raneeramaswamy.com)

In addition to her creative work, Ranee is committed to inspiring a new generation to think and act innovatively, sparking conversations that articulate new possibilities for cultural hybridity in the 21st century. She has served as guest lecturer at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and abroad, and has been a featured speaker and panelist for such forums as the Dance/USA National Conference, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and the Body Voices: Reimagining Culture, Community, and Politics conference hosted by NYU Abu Dhabi. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, Ranee has educated hundreds of students in the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam.