In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Minneapolis-St. Paul-based performer and choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy, who trained and performs in the lineage of Bharatanatyam. As a founding member of Ragamala Dance Company, she has toured extensively, throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India, as well, she’s performed in well-know US venues like Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the Kennedy Center. Her own choreographic work has been presented by venues including The Joyce Theater and The Yard, and has found support through the National Dance Project and US Artists International. The New York Times describes Ashwini as “weaving together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine…”
In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Minneapolis-St. Paul-based performer and choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy, who trained and performs in the lineage of Bharatanatyam. As a founding member of Ragamala Dance Company, she has toured extensively, throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India, as well, she’s performed in well-know US venues like Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the Kennedy Center. Her own choreographic work has been presented by venues including The Joyce Theater and The Yard, and has found support through the National Dance Project and US Artists International. The New York Times describes Ashwini as “weaving together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine…”
INTRODUCTION: Thanks for joining us Inside The Dancer’s Studio, where we bring listeners like you closer to the creative process. Inside The Dancer’s Studio is a program of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, as part of our Ideas in Motion initiative. This episode was recorded in the presence of a live audience in March of 2022. Today, we join Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive/Artistic Director in conversation with Minneapolis St. Paul performer and choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy, who trained and performs in the lineage of Bharatanatyam. As a founding member of Ragamala Dance Company, she has toured extensively through the US and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the UK and India, as well as performed in well-known US venues, like Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the Kennedy Center. Her own choreographic work has been presented by venues including The Joyce Theatre and The Yard, and has found support through the National Dance Project and USArtists International. The New York Times described Ashwini as “weaving together both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine.”
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: How or where did you know that you wanted to be a choreographer?
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: So dance for me was a natural part of growing up. My mother, Ranee Ramaswamy, and my sister, Aparna Ramaswamy are my dance teachers. Ranee founded Ragamala Dance Company, where I'm now a Choreographic Associate and Communications Director, in 1992. And Aparna, my older sister became Co-Artistic Director with her in 2000. And so they have been doing this for a really long time, and it was a path that they've been on since the 80s, since I was basically born. So since I, as I like to say was a sentient being, there was dance and music and creation happening in my house. So there was always the possibility of dance that was an open path to me. (Bolingbroke: “it’s a family business”). Exactly. It's a family business, and a way for me to connect to being Indian because I was born in this country. And I had a hard time, naturally adapting to that, because I was sort of, I rebelled against what was expected of me, because you know, someone's always telling you, you have to do something or everyone around you is doing something, you don't necessarily want to do that. So for me, I danced literally as an after-school job. Like that was, I was in a dance company, and because it was fun, I was able to go to India because of that and spend time with my family. And so that was what I did, as a hobby, and through college. Because in my mind, it was never a choice. It was an expectation, and I wanted to make a choice. And then, after college, I moved to New York City and became a book publicist. I was a English literature major, always very interested in reading books. And I learned the skills that then, I now translate into communications for the company. And over those four years, I talked on the phone with Ranee every day because then the cell phone was a new thing. Cell phone was newish and we would talk all the time. At that time was 2003-2004. Ragamala, was touring more and more and I was seeing the actual impact that they were having on communities in terms of making inroads for Indian classical dance within the contemporary landscape. In the US, it was making a difference, and I thought, in my closer to my youth growing up, I always thought it would be just something that would stay in Minnesota, but they were actually a national success story out of a family business. And I felt like that was something that I could contribute to, and it would be my only chance. I was in my 20s, and I thought if I was going to do professional dance, this was the time. And so I went back to Minneapolis in 2007 and then spent about 10 years re-training because it's such a specific form, with so many different facets, and I had been away for five years. So I spent a lot of time working on my craft. And then deciding that I had a personal vision as well just as they did. And if I was going to make dances, they would look different, they would have an aesthetic connection for sure. But what would my stories be? And so that's kind of how I was led into choreography.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I love that idea of how it, there's always a question I think with any artistic talent and practice how much is nature versus nurture? And growing up inside of that environment being in the family business, but the “aha” moment that “Wait. it's actually bigger than your family.” And that is an exciting opportunity when you talk about choice to re-engage and participate. (Ramaswamy: “Exactly”). Let's talk more about your story. So where does inspiration strike? I think this is something that could speak to either anyone writing a book, having to paint a painting or make a dance. There is that ominous, blank page?
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Yes, I'll say the cliche thing first, which is that write what you know. What they say to writers. It's two things for me. It's a personal experience. Absolutely. And some, what I want to see on stage. Those two things coming together. The my first full-length piece is a show called Nocturne, which I created in 2016. And the inspiration for that was my grandfather, he was alive at the time. This was in 2013-14. He was explaining to my, he was an entomologist, he was a well-known entomologist in India, and he moved in with my mother. (Bolingbroke: “Entomology is…”)…the study of insects. And I remember being a kid and going to...I'm not afraid of insects, because of him, I really think they're amazing. And we would go to his department, and he would just have drawers and drawers of amazing looking bugs. He would study them all the time. I found it fascinating. And he was telling my nephew a story about a specific insect that was nocturnal, and that, I don't remember exactly what it would did, or is called now. But it had a very, it's its role in the universe was microscopic, but also a huge, it ended up being like a big part of everyday life. So I started thinking about night and the things that happen at night that we don't see and how much of an impact they might make in the world that we don't even know that's happening. And then thinking about that as an allegory for people who are unseen and people who are making differences that we don't know about or think about. That was kind…
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yeah….that aren't always in the light, but perhaps doing the work. (Ramaswamy: “Exactly”). I think about other allegories, like you know, the shoemaker’s elves that help them with different things. Or you were talking about bugs, I thought about bees, and that's….
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And we don't think about those things. And so, and then, of course, the eternal connection between nature and man and how we separate ourselves from nature, when we are, we should be more a part of it. So these themes that were coming together based on this, my grandfather's occupation, (Bolingbroke: “yeah”), became the first show. And I think it's, it was like, I couldn't get it out of my head. And so I had to make it.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yes. So, as the process unfolds, how would you describe your relationship to sound?
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Well, that's a great question, because in Bharatanatyam, is meant to be danced to a very specific geographical kind of music, because the dance and the music, they say, we don't know what came first. It's that connected. (Bolingbroke: “Yes”). And same with sculpture in this form. So when you see sculpture, temples sculptures of dancers, they say, did the dance come from the sculpture or did the sculpture come from the dance? It's very multidisciplinary at its core. So breaking away from traditional classical music is a big deal because it's not supposed to, it's supposed to be so connected to the movement. So Ragamala has been doing this for many, many years. And we do believe that it can be done, if done in a very methodical and a way that has intention. And maybe the roots have connections, or maybe there's the thematic nature has connections, or you create the dance, new, anew, so that it fits that music.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: As a baseline, does Ragamala always work with the same musicians, or I think every time I've seen Ragamala performance has been with live musicians?
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: The goal is to always have live music. As you saw in our last production, we did not have live music, because we had a set that was very intricate, and there wasn’t space for them on the stage for that. Because they always sit to the left. Audience left. (Bolingbroke: “Yes”). Yes, performer, right. And there is a there is a, I want to say it's about freedom. But there's something about dancing to the classical Carnatic music that feels the most satisfying. It's supposed to be that way. But when, you can find that in other forms, so for Ragamala, yes, it's almost always live music. Not always Carnatic music only, but usually there is a Carnatic music component. So there'll be a hybrid orchestra, or it'll be just Carnatic. That's, in the last 10 years that's been mainly the focus. We get that connection to what we feel is the correct music, what feels good to us to dance to because that's so important. (Bolingbroke: “Yeah”). So the relationship to sound is, it's this intrinsic thing, you know. If the music doesn't move you or doesn't work for you, then it's it's just not going to feel right on stage. So I'm all about experimentation with intention. And with a, with this idea that somewhere along the line, there's a connection that makes sense.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I am curious as we get into honing into more how you're shaping your own creative practice and choreographic voice, the first thing we worked on together in fall of 2019, you were working, I think, really in an interesting way. Can you talk about that experimentation with music because there was a DJ, and but you also had a composer. And you had, I don't know if they were technically Carnatic singers, but more traditional Indian musicians. So talk a little bit about like, how did you get there? What did you learn from that?
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Yes, so the piece you're referring to is called Let the Crows Come. And I was in residence here, technical residence, in as you said, 2019. The seed of the idea for that piece came from a DJ. I think I saw a performance or someone use the DJ. And because I saw dance and music at the same time, I think that's where the connection came where I said, “oh, when a DJ takes a song that we all know, and then remixes the song and makes a new song. I kind of feel like that as a person.” Because I'm Indian. But when I you know, when I was in elementary school in suburban Minneapolis, I wanted to be really American. So I would remix myself to fit into that place. And so it felt like a very natural, not allegory again, but just a way to show that in music.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I, I specialize in dance, but I think the musical term is sampling, right? When you hear that, that recognizable: “Dun, dun, dun dun, dun dun” and you're like “which song is this going to be?” depending on where you grew up, and when you heard it.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Exactly. So it takes you back to a certain place at a time. But then it's now in the in the present. So you get this idea of being culturally and culturally remixed, is, I guess the what I would say. And I want, but I wanted that DJ to also be a composer. And so I was having an informational meeting with Kate Nordstrom who curates a series at the time called “Liquid Music.” And she said, “I have the perfect person. He lives in New York. His name is Jace Clayton. He's an author and he does research on the on technology, basically, and on how technology changes cultures. And he's a composer and he's a DJ.” So it's this perfect mix, because I feel like our dance form is also grappling with how to take historical forms and traditional forms and kind of map their trajectory into the present,
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Remix with intention.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Exactly. So that's where it started. And in my, in the original iteration of the piece, it was going to be him, he was going to be one composer, and then we have a composer, we always work with an India. And there was gonna be the two of them. And me and the two other dancers I selected, we were going to have a soundscape developed by both. But as we kept meeting, Jace and I, I realized I, what the structure of the piece could be, would be to show the audience Bharatanatyam in its classical form, music included.And then have two extrapolations of the same piece on two different dancers and he said, “Well, maybe you should have a third composer so that each dance, dancer has its own soundscape,” which makes made sense to me, which is when the third composer, who is an electro-acoustic cellist.So he does looping techniques.Name's Brent Arnold. And so that's how the the form, the structure of the piece started developing. I created a solo with the Carnatic composer, and we had three Carnatic musicians— a vocalist, a violinist, and a mridangist(percussionist). And they worked with me to create that song, and I used poetry from India and made that solo. And then I worked with a dancer called Barrett Aldrin, who does Gaga, a form from Israel, contemporary form. And we took sections of my solo, I videotaped it, I reversed, reversed it and slowed it down and I would send her the clips and then she would come into the studio and show me the reverse of what I did because that's a Gaga technique practice.They do reverse movement. And then the third dance, her name is Alana Morris. And she is, went to Juilliard, and she's a modern trained, but she's also from Trinidad, and so she's interested in African diasporic dance forms. And She's very full-bodied and very emotional as a dancer. So we use the narrative framework, as well as the gestural language of Bharatanatyam to extrapolate the gestures into full-bodied movement for her. And then over the course of about a year, because they live in Minneapolis too, we got together and created their solos. So when you see the whole piece unfold, it's a re-processing of the original solo, and giving people the opportunity to make connections about Bharatanatyam through different bodies and different forms that they wouldn't otherwise potentially see.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yeah, I feel that you're, you somewhat been foreshadowing the answer to this next question. But I'll ask it as a part of our practice. So how would you define 21st century dance practices?This has been something that we've been doing with the students and with the faculty here, and then also with each of our visiting artists, and I’d love to give you this space to name it in your own terms.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: I have many things running through my head, as I think about this, because I, so much of our work, my family's work, is to convey the idea that anything that you're making now is a contemporary piece of art. So I might be using a vocabulary handed down to me, but when I put it together in my own way, it's a new dance, it's a new piece of work. (Bolingbroke: “Yes”). And so there is a real, people have a really hard time not understanding that the dances themselves are not passed on from person to person. And we like to equate it to just learning a language. If you are in kindergarten, and you're learning to write your alphabet, it doesn't mean that you have to write the Bible, you know, you can write….
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE:That's the only thing that language is for….
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY:Yes, yes, yes. You don’t have to write a hundreds of year old, you won't write hundreds of your old book, you will write your, a new novel or a new, if it's nonfiction, it's still new. And so that is, I think a easier way for people to understand. What's happened in the 21st century, which I think is very interesting is when we were learning, especially when my mom and sister were learning. But when I was also learning growing up, we had no mirrors, and we wrote everything down. And so all the corrections, we have notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of meticulous corrections from class, hours of class. And there's no video, there's no reliance on any sort of technology to remember all of that. It's, once you write it down, you almost don't even need to refer to the book again. I still do that I have a book in my backpack that I take notes from class and then I just remember it next time.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I, kinesthetic learning in that way, you know, I speak, that speaks I think regardless of dance training, you're like, “Oh, I did it through my hand, I'm more likely to remember it.”
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Exactly. And when you learn without a mirror and you feel what the corrections are, it's very different than relying on on a reflection. And I think of the video is the same thing. I of course, now I do use video all the time, because it's so much easier to remember and and have, especially when I'm working with other forms, and I can't do them myself. But there is something about that method of learning that feels more like it really sits in you, less surface almost. I'm not saying it's better. But it's just the it's the 21st century has connected us in such a way that we can use all these devices too, and it's a great thing. But I think sometimes it's easier to forget things or kind of not embody them in the same way as when you're just being told and you have to remember them in your mind.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE:There are a couple of things come back for that mean, first of all, you acknowledge it when you're collaboration with Jace and how he experiments with technology. That also I totally agree feels very 21st century. But it is the historical knowledge of the past and how do you make space for that, How do you honor that, but then where do you also include your thoughts on it? If someone were to be asked to write a paper about Shakespeare or Victorian literature, it isn't just putting them in a time capsule, but rather to interpret and build off of it and keep the conversation going. And so I love that idea also in dance, and hopefully more culturally-rooted choreographers will think about that because I know they're having those conversations. Patrick Makuakāne, who was here a couple of weeks ago with Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, I remember him speaking on a panel and saying like, what if in a culturally- rooted or traditional form, the one aesthetic is, I might be paraphrasing here, experimentation, is change? That's what he meant. Like, what if change is the one constant? I think both as an artist, and in life that really spoke hugely to me.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Well, it's interesting, because for us, a change could be so subtle that you wouldn't know it, but it might feel radical for a form that's so subtle and so intricate. Yesterday, I talked to somebody in, at the Groundworks Company, where we, I was working for the day about, they asked, “what what do you want, why don't you want to change the grammar that you've learned? what is wrong with taking some like a step and then changing its its movement fully? (Bolingbroke: “like a noun and move that a verb?”). I will do that for somebody else, I won't do that for myself, because, Bharatanatyam is an oral tradition. It always is changing, because it's taught to us orally, and that practitioner will embody that in a different way. But it's also taken so many years to create the aesthetic framework, so many, so much work has gone into, your hands need to be two inches in front of your, your chest, and this high, because this is where it looks best. And there's nothing wrong with experimenting with that, but if the work has been done for you, you enjoy how that looks, then working within that is actually freeing.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I think that also could be really great advice for any of our dancers who have trained for years and years in ballet and are trying to find their own voice. With that in mind, I'll ask our last question, which is, what advice would you like to impart to our students. This could be the best piece of advice or something meaningful that you've received, and you'd like to pass it on. Or you can make up advice of your own if you have some to share.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: I think, so first of all, saying this as someone who is privileged enough to grow up in this family that was, that laid a lot of the groundwork and the pathways ahead of me. But making, if you're interested in just being a dancer, not just if you're interested being a dance artists, not a generative dance artist. Working as a dancer, not as a choreographer, then I think, realizing that you need to put in so much time, not just running things, but thinking about what's the intention behind this movement? And how can you really make it the most effective movement that it can be? So when you're in the studio, it's easy to just do a practice that keeps your stamina up. But what is gonna make you stand out? Is that attention to the intention?
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: It is not just the physical, (Ramaswamy: “Yes”), but it sounds like the mental and the emotional.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Yes, exactly. As a choreographer, I would say, don't make work that you think other people want to see you make. Because as I was telling you, my two, my two categories for myself are something that's personal, and something I want to see. Make what you want to see on stage, and make what you are, you have to make. And that will, those are the works that will, that will be changed, that will be effective, I think and work for you. And the third thing I will say is have informational meetings. Everything, every single opportunity, I believe that has come my way has been because I reach out to people without asking for something. I mean, advice. But in my mind, I don't have an end game to that. And I'm always like, “Oh, really you want now you later on you want the piece or you want,” it's always been very unexpected and organic. That's not to say that you shouldn't apply for things and have a lot of drive. But, but people want to give you advice. And a lot of times when you are giving, you're telling them your ideas, they're seeing it from a perspective that is, it's not about selling something, it's about really telling them what you want to do. That's very compelling.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: And, and getting to know people as people, not just positions they hold.
ASHWINI RAMASWAMY: Exactly. And that really gives you a deeper understanding of the the whole industry. And it's not just people, hopefully you're not seeing people as just gatekeepers. (Bolingbroke: “Yeah”). They are people who want to help you.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ashwini. Please join me in thanking her.
OUTRODUCTION: Inside The Dancer’s Studio Lunchtime Talk Series is supported by NCCAkron, the University of Akron, the University of Akron Foundation and the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts. Our podcast program is produced by Jennifer Edwards. Ellis Rovin is our composer and editor. Theme music by Floco Torres, cover art by Micah Kraus. Special thanks to Kat Wentz and the team on the ground in Akron, Ohio. To learn more about NCC Akron, please visit us online at nccakron.org. And follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCCAkron. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for Inside The Dancer’s Studio. Please share with your friends and if you’d like to help get the word out rate us, and leave a review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening and stay curious.