Hello, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. Welcome to this eleventh episode of The Dance Edit Extra.

This week, we have two guests who have forged a remarkable artistic partnership over the course of more than three decades, a partnership made even stronger, and even more remarkable, by the fact that they are mother and daughter. Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy are the co-artistic directors of Ragamala Dance Company, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are practitioners of the Indian classical dance form bharatanatyam, which has a centuries-long, profoundly spiritual history—a tradition to which they remain deeply connected. But they are also committed to showing bharatanatyam as a living art, and one that can speak to audiences of all kinds.

Last fall, I saw their new work Fires of Varanasi, which they’re now touring, when it came to New York City. It is compelling as an audience-facing stage performance—it has beautiful elements of stagecraft. But watching it felt like a form of meditation, almost.

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Ranee and Aparna—which, by the way, begins with basically a semester’s worth of bharatanatyam history condensed into just a few minutes. It was actually pretty incredible to witness them do that. Here they are.

[pause]

Margaret Fuhrer:
I now have the pleasure of welcoming Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy of Ragamala Dance Company to the podcast. Hi, and thank you so much for joining today.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Hello. We’re so happy to be here. Thank you for having us.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Actually, so listeners can put voices to names, would you mind each giving a quick introduction, including your names?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Sure. I am Ranee Ramaswamy. I’m the founder and co-artistic director of Ragamala Dance Company.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
I am Aparna Ramaswamy, co-artistic director of Ragamala Dance Company.

Margaret Fuhrer:
A mother-daughter team, I should have mentioned initially. So, starting very broad here: you practice bharatanatyam, which is a form from South India, and Western audiences are beginning to learn more about Indian classical dance styles, but we still have a ways to go. So, I know this is something to be articulated over the course of years, not minutes, but I was wondering if you would be willing to provide a brief explanation of the roots of the bharatanatyam tradition and the core principles of its technique.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
So dance in India, it goes back to mythical times. We believe that dance was created by the gods for the enjoyment of people, and that because it was audible and visible, everybody could understand the stories that are told. First, there was only one style of dance, but then because of the oral tradition, it was taught from word to mouth throughout India, it absorbed the cultural nuances of the different states of India. And it became five, now I think it’s six, distinct classical styles. So it’s not a folk form, it’s a classical form, and all of these forms have their distinct positions, gestures, and even costumes, the language used for the singing, singing the words of the lyrics, and so on. So distinctly, when you see them, you can say what comes from where and which style is that.

So our dance form is bharatanatyam, and it comes from the Southeastern part of India. And because I was born and raised there, that was the art form at that time available to young children, and that’s why I studied it. But in the early, until mid 1900s, this dance was only performed in the Hindu temples by a community of people called the devadasis, or servants of gods. So these people were dedicated as children, as young children who showed interest in the art forms. Or, in those days, it was like the Catholics would send kids to become nuns—there were children that were dedicated to the temple. And so they became a community, and they practiced and performed in the temples. There were male and female, and depending upon the knowledge that they gained by the quality of their dancing, they were placed in the—if you were an amazingly fabulous performer who could speak many languages, sing, was a very highly qualified dancer, she would be dedicated to the larger temples. So just like we are—some people perform at the Jacob’s Pill0w, and some people perform outside your house. [laughter]

So women, at that time, the dancers had very high respect. They were paid, they were educated, much more than women in normal life, who were mostly housewives. But anyway, during the British rule of India, things changed, because the British wanted to change things that they didn’t think were appropriate. So they abolished dancing in the temple. And the temples were supported by the kings; the temples supported the dancers. And when all that was lost, dancers had to move out of the temple and earn a living. So they started to teach to everybody. So I come from a caste that wouldn’t have been able to dance 300 years ago, but now, after the dance came out of the temples, it was a renaissance for all dance styles. Each people grew, and there are so many, many, many, many dancers now who are not having performance opportunities. So it just went from being performed in a small community to this place where the diaspora has amazing Indian classical dancers.

So I’ve talked about the background, and Aparna can talk about the technique, Aparna?

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Sure. So I can talk about the technique, and I can talk about the intention of the aesthetic as well.

So technically, to put it very simply, bharatanatyam has two primary aspects. The first is a rhythmic or abstract aspect, where our technique is based on a vocabulary of 50 steps or movements that a dancer first learns. So a child going into a class will spend two years learning these basic movements. They’re very symmetrical and they use all parts of the body. So the relationship to the foot, the foot on the earth is very important. We have flat footed movements, movements that emphasize the heel, movements that emphasize the ball of the foot. And then we have, our basic position is kind of like a demi-plié, position, half-bent knees, and then we have a basic position of the arms. But we have a wide range of movements and extremely increasing complex rhythmic patterns of the feet. And those rhythmic patterns are expressed through the entire body.

I mentioned that that is abstract. So of course, that aspect doesn’t tell the story. And as a dancer, it still forms a very… It can be very simple when you start, but the more and more you dance, you create very complex rhythmic combinations. But that first, those 50 steps form your basic “vocabulary” of rhythmic movements. And then the other aspect is the dramatic or expressive element, where a dancer uses her body, uses the lyrics of the song or the poem, uses her face, which it has to be extremely nimble, but most importantly, the emotional sentiment of the song or of the poem that she or he is expressing. And so through that, one can tell very many stories—not just mythological stories, current stories—but always really having that idea of emotional intensity that is communicated from the performer to the audience.

Now, the reason why I want to talk about that emotional intensity is that, as Ranee said, bharatanatyam has this very spiritual beginning. It was created by the gods for the enjoyment of the people. It was performed in the temples as part of the service, or the ritual, or the celebration. So always having that spiritual quality connected to it, really kind of shrouding it. And so the idea is that the dancer is the vehicle between the community, or the audience, and God, that medium. And so the capacity to emotionally convey that devotion, or love, or whatever the emotions that the dancer is portraying, has to be completely truthful and genuine. And it is her responsibility to really cause this aesthetic relish or feeling in the audience, so that Baba and Rasa, we say, the dancer is the one who outputs the emotional quantity and creates and develops an emotional response in the audience. So that really, we take all of our technique to serve the larger purpose of this Baba and Rasa concept.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
It’s very much—if I may add with what Aparna says—it is also, you can see that it’s not dance which also is theater—it’s a combination. Because you are dancing, but at the same time, every aspect of a theater person acting their parts out, the dancer does. Because bharatanatyam used to be a solo dance and it’s actually… most of the time it’s performed as a solo performer dancing for two and a half hours. So she takes on all of these roles, and if she’s telling a story, she’s not only being all the characters in the story, but she also sets the setting of the story. So, it’s a large responsibility, and a very good artist can do justice and hold attention with the audience for that two and a half hours. So it takes a lot of practice to be in that situation.

Margaret Fuhrer:
That was a masterclass in about five minutes. Thank you for condensing centuries of history into a podcast-size summary. I appreciate that.

So, let’s bring it back to the two of you, because you have developed this beautiful partnership over the course of more than three decades now. Can you talk about how that partnership has evolved over time and what makes your collaboration work?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
So, when I came to the United States as an immigrant with Aparna as a young child, I had studied dance growing up in India until I was 17 years old. In those days, I’m talking about… Well, I’m going to be 70, so that many years ago, women didn’t really choose to become, at least in my community, they went to school, they studied, they went to college, they did learn dance, they learned music. Then they got married, became a housewife, and it’s not… When I say that people think it’s something that was forced upon, that was how it was. Everybody was happy. Parents were happy. They finished their responsibility. The woman got married and had children, and it was a different type of life.

But when I came to the United States, there were opportunities. My community in Minneapolis was a very small Indian community. They said, “Oh, you have studied dance—will you teach?” And I went back to India to study when Aparna was a very young child. And when I started teaching here, she just watched and started learning all the movements that I was teaching someone else, a student. So she was too young to start, but my mother noticed how interested she was even as young as three. And so that’s how we started our partnership. And then in 1984, our teacher who is now, she has been our teacher now for almost 35 years and continues to be and will always be, she came to Minnesota brought by a professor at the university for a two week residency. Now this, her name is Alarmél Valli, and she is four years younger than me and lived in the same city as I did and was a child prodigy at 12. I have read about her all my life and never seen her. But I see her in Minneapolis. I mean, destiny. What else?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Destiny! Yeah.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Aparna and I go to this performance. We were blown away. Now, Aparna as a child was always an adult. She was a complete adult at one, two. I mean, it was magical that how the two of us were more friends and we grew up as friends. We became this amazing teacher-student. So when we had—at the workshop, we took the class and Aparna really impressed her. So she said, “Oh, if you bring her to India, I’ll teach her.” And I said, “Well, can I also come? Can I also learn?” And she said, “Oh, you’re teaching here. Why would you want to start all over again? If you come to me, you have to start from the beginning.” Because her style was very unique and indeed different. Two or three months later, we were there at her home, the two of us, and we continued this until went to college. We were there for four months every year. Ashwini joined us later, because she would only take children at seven, so she had to wait till then.

But Aparna and I, our partnership grew like this. We practiced together. We studied together. We planned together. We talked together. And of course, she had her school, college. Throughout, she had never stopped, from three. Her attention towards bharatanatyam never left. And there was motivation, because we saw our teacher every year. Every single year we go, we get more motivated to come back and practice together. So, she performed in all the choreography that I did until she joined me after college as full-time with Ragamala. And then we started to create work together. She brought her sensibilities into the work. So there is never a time when I would say, “Oh, no, that doesn’t work.” Or she wouldn’t say, “Mom, I don’t want to do that.” It is like, I respect her sensibility, she respects mine. So we make great partners.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Yeah. I would say that listening to you, Amma, tell the story really made me realize that I think one of the formative experiences for us is when we immigrated to this country, even though I was a young child, we were experiencing it together. She would watch the same shows that I would watch. We would discover Montessori school together. We would watch “Sesame Street” together. We would watch “He-Man” together, whatever it was. But we were experiencing this new culture, and absorbing it, and becoming a part of it together.

And it does take, I think, unique personalities to work together, mother and daughter, and set aside ego, or all of the family drama that can become part of it. And we work very well together. We’re very different. And that could be why we work well together. But I think Ranee’s right that we have so much respect for one another, and we absolutely are in love with the treasure that our teacher is giving us. We value it to the highest degree and we work together. We are on a journey together, side by side, hand in hand, to deepen our experience in this form. And so all of that together, I think, makes us really ideal partners.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
It’s interesting Aparna said this, I forgot about that, because my American experience started with Aparna as a child. So I didn’t know anything before that. Only by reading Reader’s Digest. But my lived experience here is with Aparna. So we are emotionally, mentally in the same plane. And as she said, our teachers are the string that connects us. Because that’s the foundation that we have from which we go and we build our own things. But it ties us together, the studies that we have done to

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, yeah. Not just the same mission, but actually on the same path at the same time, the same timeline.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Of course, as you mentioned, Ranee, there’s another Ramaswamy in Ragamala Dance Company. There’s Ashwini, the younger sister. It seems like, as you’ve said, dance and family are just inextricably linked in your artistic lives. Can you talk a little about how the idea of family has shaped Ragamala and your work for the company?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
I think what happened with Aparna and I, we were thrown together as young as… I mean, I was only 26 at that time. I was a young immigrant, and I brought with this culture. That’s all I had. Those days, you could come to this country—even though we came in an educated, Aparna’s father was an engineer—we were allowed to bring only $400 and come to this country. It’s interesting. But the richness of culture and tradition that we brought with us…Aparna, of course, was only still a child, but—was of such value. My mother taught me so many things in India: the art, the mythology, culture, tradition, cooking. So here it was, I was teaching my daughter the dance, and somehow we melded together so it was easy.

I didn’t plan that Ashwini would join us. But because we took her to India every year, she too experienced everything we were experiencing. So it was, I think Ashwini loved… And by that time we had started, I had started Ragamala Dance Company, and it wasn’t just me and Aparna. We had a few members that joined that early. Ashwini was very much drawn to group, us working together. She was very attracted to working with our other dancers. So she came and she participated throughout her school year, through her college years, and then left to go to New York to work because she didn’t think she was going to continue and make dance her profession, even though she had danced all her life. But then it’s something that actually, there is a calling, I guess. And she was watching what was happening to Ragamala, where we were going. We were slowly starting to really get our roots here. So she came back, she joined us, and now she has put her whole life into art. She’s doing her own work as well as joined our, she’s very much a big part of Ragamala. So there we are. It wasn’t really planned, “Okay, we should be these three people.” It all happened organically, I would say.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
I think my mother is right that there definitely was some very natural sharing, and values, of course, in the home. But at the same time, I think that there’s something about the fact that the three of us are very, very different yet still so connected to this that makes me think it’s just much larger than that. It makes me feel that somehow, as it’s been a very long journey, as you’ve said. I mean, I started dancing when I was five years old. It’s been a long time, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels that we’re taking these steps one step after the other, after the other. And somehow our story as immigrants here, our story as artists, our story as practitioners, our story as students, the whole thing is progressing and it’s nesting one inside the other. I found my place. Ashwini’s finding her place. And there’s something about the three of our personalities, I think, that make it very safe, and welcoming, and loving, and all-encompassing that has made all of that, what Ranee said, happen.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Again, it feels like the hand of fate is shaping things here.

So in a lot of dance forms with long histories, there’s been a lot of talk, especially recently, about how to bring what is inherited into the present, to respect tradition while also helping the art form evolve. And that’s something that Ragamala has always done very thoughtfully and very conscientiously. So can you talk about, first of all, why that’s important, and second, about how you approach the blending of old and new?

Aparna Ramaswamy:
So, as we’ve talked about this, the tradition, the form, it goes back millennia. And not just the dance form. It is really a multidisciplinary experience, so it equally draws from the literary traditions, the musical traditions, the music and the dance are just inseparable. And of course, the dance has been so inspired by sculpture and visual art. And so, yes, it has been carried down, but something that Ranee said in the beginning of our conversation is key to this, which is, all of the Indian arts have been passed down orally. And so the idea that an individual passes down his or her knowledge and experience to another person allows for that dynamic relationship and evolution. And so you are not taking something static and ensuring that it remains exactly the same. You’re doing the opposite, which is you’re taking one person’s interpretation, experience, lived experience, and passing it on to someone who naturally is an open vessel, but brings their own contexts to it. And so it’s constantly evolving in the way that it should. It makes sense in the time, and space, and place that it has been given. And it not just survives, but it grows. It flourishes.

And so for us in our practice, obviously we are very proud of the tradition that we come from and from the dance lineage, from our teacher that we come from, and we absolutely cherish the lessons and the sincerity with which that has been given to us and the generosity with which it has been given to us. But we have to also see it in the place where we are. And so in the work that we create, it’s very clear to us that it is not just our purpose, but our intention and our responsibility to make sure that we are giving an invitation to our larger audiences here in the United States to be a part of it, to understand it, to feel it, not just to see it as something other or something like a museum piece from a culture that they’re not familiar with. How can we personalize the experience for them? How can we make it much more universal?

And so in the work that we create, we ensure that we maintain the integrity of what we are coming with and what we have been given, and we are acknowledging with whom and for whom and where we are creating the work. So when we create new works, those are always at the top of our minds. And so we create full-length new works using the artistic and cultural information from our home.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
It’s also a poetic tradition. So if you try to make bharatanatyam prose, it’s not going to have its meat. You take away a lot of its unspoken messages, which are all in poetic form.

America is a land of so many cultures. And so all these cultures, if you really look, they have similarities that are unbelievable. They may be thousands of miles apart, but we all have things that bind us, that are common to us. And I think that’s where our work comes. We make sure that we connect these cultural, poetics, lyrics, messages, images, to make work that you can… It has many facets. And for example, just quickly, the work Written in Water connects an old Indian game with The Conference of the Birds. So, I mean, they are from two different places, but they are the same message.

So it’s in sort of linear, we have more of a several layered messages in our production. And we also use expansive sets, we use live music, we bring in… So that the audience also has many different entry points into our work. I mean, you could do a solo work. The solo works are amazing. When our teacher, or when Aparna, does a two and a half hour solo, it’s phenomenal for people. If you really know it, it’s an amazing experience. But we, for the last 40 years, me, and then Aparna and I, have created every year, we create a new work. It’s not easy, but it is trying to understand our place in the world, in the universe. That’s what most of our work is about.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I mean, the idea of how to evolve traditions without erasing them, that is the perennial immigrant story, which is another common thread in your works. Why do you think dance is an especially good medium for immigrant narratives, for intercultural narratives?

Aparna Ramaswamy:
I can speak from our experience as dancers, as dance creators, and also as dance audience: dance has this incredible power to express what the person, what the artist is feeling so honestly and genuinely. It’s such a truthful expression, and dance has been used that way in cultures all over the world for millennia. And it’s been a beautiful embodiment and such an honest embodiment of what somebody is going through and what someone is feeling in that very moment without… And it could be, you could have choreographed movement, but the way that the person presents it is so spontaneous, and that genuine communication between two people, without words, is an incredible experience. And so when you come from another culture, you carry not just that humanity of that moment and that spark between two people. You carry all of this cultural information with you as well, and that’s just a beautiful transfer from one person to another. It can be.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Yeah. It’s like when you read books, mythology or philosophy, it’s in books. You have to imagine. That’s a beautiful way of doing it. But visually, it brings those on stage by a performer. It’s so… What do you call it? It hits you because it’s right there in front of you. All of this is it from a good artist. It really makes a huge impact.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. The immediacy of it. It is right there, in your body.

Religion and spirituality are, as you’ve said, deeply embedded in the history and technique of bharatanatyam, and it seems like in your personal dance practice as well. Can you talk about how they sort of weave through and inform your creative process and your approach to performance?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Yes. I’ll take this at the beginning. I mean, I’m a practicing Hindu. It’s interesting we have to say that, because if I were in India, nobody would even ask. In Hinduism—Hinduism is something that you don’t have to be somewhere in order to practice. It’s just a way of life. And I was brought up in a family where it was very, very… The belief system was a lot that there is a God and the gods are there to take care of you no matter what happens. Just leave it to them. So I was brought up in that kind of situation, and I had this—I mean, coming to this country, starting your own organization, all of that, I never think it’s me. I have a power that actually is behind me helping me every step of the way.

So now this art form was based in the Hindu temples, and…you have to know your myths. You have to know your gods. If you don’t feel them, if you don’t evoke them, how can you show that on stage? So, that is one step. And you can be not at all spiritual and still be a phenomenal artist if you are a very good actor. But I think it helps the first layer, having soaked in the religion really helps. And now, again, when I’m talking about Hinduism, they say, “You see God in anything. Nature is God, a stone is God.” So, it brings that spirituality alive. And the whole idea of, when you see nature as God, where is that idea of protecting the forest, protecting your green? It’s all becomes part of your religion. In education, a piece of paper is symbolized as the goddess Saraswati. So you have to be careful. Don’t throw the paper. Don’t kick it. And this morning I was listening to something where they say, “Every tool that we use that helps you make a living is the goddess of education or a manifestation—everything that you see in front of you is a manifestation of a particular god or goddess.” So the ragas, the music that we use, are all forms of gods and goddesses. So you evoke your choreography to evoke these through your melody. And when we start our dance, we actually thank the earth, and the gods, and the teacher, and the audience for giving us this opportunity to perform, to be taught.

So there is this huge way of life that you approach your work with. The spirituality is the backbone of this art form. When you take that out, you may have a beautiful work, but it that’s not what bharatanatyam was meant to be. It was meant to have that backbone which is all of spirituality.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
You know, as Ranee said, they’re completely intertwined, this form and the religion from which it comes, and also our expression and perspective of that religion. But I think what’s, for us when we create work, and this is even when… So when we talk about carrying cultures and creating work that utilizes our cultural traditions in our new homes, what’s really fascinating for us when we go back—and it’s not about going back to just mythological stories, it’s about going back, too, to how the tradition sees our relationship with the sacred. Hinduism doesn’t always see God as one thing. As Ranee’s saying, it can be manifested in so many different things. But at the same time, our relationship with God can be—there’s poetry that describes God as human, or God as personal, God as close, God as a lover, God as a mother, God as a child, God as… And so those relationships really examine our relationships to other humans, to the sacred, and the emotions that we use to relate to that.

And at the same time, when we talk about divinity in nature and God manifested in everything, then it gives us an extremely important sense of humility. And that is very important to us, and that characteristic in our work is very important. Because we don’t want to be too human-centric or ego-centric about that. And so I think that perspective of, of humility is a constant reminder, is very important in the traditions from which we come.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Also, when we say it’s spiritual or sacred, it seems like, “Okay, it’s very rigid. It’s the same. Everybody will be praying.” It’s not. As Aparna said, if God is your lover, you approach him like you would do another partner. So there is love, there’s anger, there’s jealousy, there is hatred, there is irritation, there is doubt. All of this happens. So you are actually portraying a real life story, but with God. God is the man.

In most of the traditional bharatanatyam, the idea is that you are the human soul wanting to unite with the divine. So your friend, sometimes you’re talking to a friend who is the connector between you and him. “Why don’t you go bring him to me? I long for him.” It’s all personal. As Aparna said, it’s a very personal pouring out of emotions.

But it depends upon the choice of the choreography. Our new choreography, Fires of Varanasi, is about dying, and rebirth, and reincarnation, and how the city of Varanasi, which is a city where you see death every day, life keeps going on. There is celebration and death, and how we, as Hindus, believe in that idea of the resilience. Because all of this practice, I tell my teacher, “In my next birth, I want to be your student when I’m five years old.” Which means I know that not only I’ll be born, she’ll be born too.

Margaret Fuhrer:
She’ll be too. Yeah.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
And there is a continuum of relationships.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Let’s talk about Fires of Varanasi, because like much of what you do, it touches on all of these themes that we’ve been discussing so far: the meeting of ancient and contemporary, the immigrant experience, the porous boundaries between the human body and the spiritual self. Can you talk a little about the story this work tells, and why that story was speaking to you creatively at this moment?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
We were touring Written in Water and we had years of touring. And every time you have to make up, you have to start planning your next performance. And at that time, my father passed away. And he, as an immigrant, he was living here, but as I gave you the little bit of background about my parents, they didn’t want to die here. They wanted to be in India, but that didn’t happen, because they couldn’t. My father was not in good health to go back to India. And there wasn’t anyone. We are here, so it was very… They have two children and both of us are in the United States. So it so happened that he died here. And my brother made sure that his ashes were taken to Varanasi.

And so Varanasi, that was a symbol of all of those, became personal. Part of my father was in Varanasi. So then, Aparna and I said, “Oh my God, look at this, how many Hindus, millions, billions of Hindus have the belief that if you die in Varanasi, or if you take your ashes to Varanasi, you have a betterment of life. You either go get salvation or your next birth will be better.” And so we said, “People know so much about Bollywood. Who knows about this? Let’s do this as our performance.” And so we slowly, slowly, slowly, this is where we are. We created that piece mainly because it not only is part of our own culture, it’s part of our family.

Margaret Fuhrer:
A universal story made personal. Yeah.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Yeah, exactly. And I think what you said to introduce this piece was exactly right. For us, it was exactly the right moment to do it in as well. I mean, aside from the pandemic, just this time of we were experiencing the personalization of this age-old tradition and this tradition that’s still living. And for us, being part of the Indian diaspora, it is really remarkable to see how traditions are sustained, not just through time, but through place, and how it continues regardless of where Hindus, or where Indians, or wherever culture or tradition someone may be from. And many times they survive and sustain even more outside of the homeland. And so for us to explore that idea, but explore it in a way to take the metaphysical concepts, and then apply them to how people take those concepts and they become real part of our lives. And that was very, very important to us, because as you’ve seen through this whole conversation, all of these concepts are lived by us and by so many others. They’re not just concepts that are out there that we talk about.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. I have one last question for you, which you’ve both already started to answer, but just to pull all of the different threads together: there are still people who believe that a culture-based art form like bharatanatyam is impenetrable to those outside of the culture. Why is that untrue? And how does your work prove it to be untrue?

Ranee Ramaswamy:
I think for every culture, another culture is difficult to understand. Even when I first came to this country, it took me many years to have American friends. Because everyday activity, everyday conversation, what they do at home, everything is different. So you start going towards your own culture, and you are just going to Maple Grove or Roseville into your temple and not really assimilating. It is because you think they’re very different.

And then you start to make friends, and then you realize, “Really? Really? Oh, we did this.” My friend would say, “Well, it was only 200 years ago it was like that in our family too.” I mean, this is what America is. It’s made up of so many cultures. And we have the amazing opportunity to look and learn cultures.

But I would say in Minneapolis, I started this dance in 1978. Now it is almost 2022. Actually, we have slowly built such a wonderful audience, and I think when you are saying it’s impenetrable is because people want to understand everything right away. You’re not going to do it. It took me 25… Even now when they say something, I’d say, “Oh.” Aparna will say, “That’s not the way to pronounce it, Mom.” What’s a mortgage? The word mortgage. I say “mort-gage,” and Aparna would say, “No, it’s moregage.” So even language takes a long time, to get one person’s English changed to another English. So when you look at it, you have to first look at it as a, “What is this?” If something interests you, “Look at the beautiful costumes. Well, I’m amazed at their hand gestures. What’s that face? Their hands are…” You need curiosity. Anybody with curiosity will continue.

Then, I think it’s—both the performer as well as the audience need to work at it. The performers, we do everything that we can to make it—we talk about it, we do community outreach, we teach, we explain, we have detailed program notes, we do post- pre- question and answers, and then it gets to be, “Oh, this is what it is.” And the two years later, we come to New York and someone will say, “You know, I saw this at the Joyce. Maybe I liked that. I’ll go to it.” So you just get… You cannot, I don’t think it’s, even Indians in India, there are so many languages. Three thousand dialects. Even when we make work, we have to get someone to translate and understand it. So language is a barrier everywhere. And then the gestures are very stylized. Even a native is not going to understand all the gestures.

But there is… I mean, when we go to modern dance, we are amazed at their body movement and how they move. It’s a physicality. There are many, many ways to enjoy a culture. So if you are a curious person, I think bharatanatyam has a lot to offer, because so many… When you go to the show, you’re not there to jump in or celebrate with it. You come back emotionally charged and spiritually charged. So people who have that desire would definitely find it interesting.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Well, I mean, if you think about that, even if you read a novel, and if that novel may contain so much information that you may read it once and get one understanding, and then you have to read it again and again. Oftentimes the same with a poem. They could be in the language that you’ve spoken your whole life, but because the substance may be so rich, it takes further examination. And at the same time, the flip side of that is we have already talked about this idea of spontaneous communication, this idea of deep emotion, and those concepts exist in all art. We all have a response, and it doesn’t have to be the same response or same reaction. I think as long as you feel that you can trust it and you feel something, then why not experience it and then try it again?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. There will always be a point of connection because all art is about our shared humanity. That’s why we do it.

Ranee Ramaswamy:
Yeah.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Exactly.

Margaret Fuhrer:
That feels like a beautiful note to end on. Fires of Varanasi, listeners, will be at Northrop University of Minnesota on February 26th and then at The Soraya at California State University Northridge on April 9th. Ranee and Aparna, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your perspective.

Aparna Ramaswamy:
Thanks so much for having us.

[pause]

One more thank-you to Ranee and Aparna. In the show notes, we have links to the Ragamala Dance Company website, which includes ticket information for their upcoming performances, and also to their social pages so you can keep up with them that way.

And thanks to all of you for subscribing to The Dance Edit Extra. See you back here in two weeks for another episode. Have a great weekend, everyone.