WORLD PREMIERE: Ranee Ramaswamy’s and Aparna Ramaswamy’s
Fires of Varanasi

Celebrated as one of the diaspora’s leading bharatanatyam ensembles, Ragamala Dance Company, led by mother-and-daughter team Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy, embodies the artistic and spiritual traditions of India while creating a dialogue about the contemporary human experience.

Commissioned by The Kennedy Center, Fires of Varanasi is a site-specific work and ritual for the stage where time is suspended and humans merge with the divine. The choreographers honor the cosmic trinity of Varanasi—sacred pilgrimage routes, the Ganges River, and the patron deity Shiva—and imagine a metaphorical crossing place, where one may leave the mundane and enter into the world of transcendence. In this theatrical reimagining, they expand upon the birth-death-rebirth continuum in Hindu thought to illuminate immigrant experiences of life and death in the diaspora.

Set to an original, recorded score, French scenic and lighting designer Willy Cessa transforms the stage as the dancers traverse the iconic stairways and landings along the river banks and perform ritual ablutions in the sacred river.

Fires of Varanasi is part of The John F. Kennedy Center at 50 and the Kennedy Center's 2021 Millennium Stage Summer Series, celebrating our societal emergence from the pandemic and the return of live performance.

Saturday, September 11, 2021, 7:30pm
Sunday, September 12, 2021, 7:30pm

More information