R ANEE R AMASWAMY 2011 DISTINGUISHED ARTIST THE MCKNIGHT FOUNDATION D ISTINGUISHED 2011 A RTIST R ANEE R AMASWAMY 2011 ON BHARATANATYAM Bharatanatyam is a dynamic, evolving dance tradition from southern India— an evocative language in which the dancer who has mastered and internalized the idiom can write her personal dance-poetry. The dance was never meant to be just entertainment; it is also meant to enlighten the performer and the viewer through the underlying spirituality that forms its core. With a history that goes back more than 2,000 years to the ancient temples of southern India, Bharatanatyam has come down through the centuries integrating elements of music, theater, poetry, sculpture, and literature. This multidimensional art offers an infinite scope for understanding and exploring the body, mind, and spirit. While the vocabulary of Bharatanatyam is highly structured, the beauty, vitality, stunning physicality, and emotional depth of the form offer infinite freedom for self-expression. It is these qualities that have allowed the form to survive through the years as a tradition that has the potential to convey both timeless themes and contemporary ideas. “We couldn’t be more fortunate that she decided to stay, and that she accepted that long-ago invitation to dance.” RANEE RAMASWAMY 2011 MCKNIGHT DISTINGUISHED ARTIST 3 - 4 Left: India, 1963 Right: Minneapolis, 2011. Photo © Ed Bock DISTINGUISHED ARTIST RANEE RAMASWAMY INTRODUCTION Robert J. Struyk Chair, The McKnight Foundation Ranee Ramaswamy loved to dance arts landscape. Over the last three decades, performers have brought people together Ranee has introduced thousands of Minnesota around ancient stories whose resonance from the moment she took her first audiences to the classical Indian dance form becomes deeper when they’re told through lesson as a little girl in India—but Bharatanatyam. “This has been my life’s work, the lenses of many different cultures. she was 26 years old before she truly became spreading the greatness of this dance form all A lifelong learner herself, Ranee has always a dancer. throughout Minnesota for the last 30 years,” she considered community and education to be Ranee was a young wife and mother, a told Minnesota Public Radio earlier this year. “I just as important as art. It’s impossible to know new immigrant from India to the Minneapolis was looking at a map of Minnesota the other day, exactly how many Minnesota schoolchildren suburbs, when the Tamil Association of and I couldn’t find a town that I haven’t visited!” have learned something new about the world Minnesota asked her to perform at a Diwali Ranee is a supremely gifted dancer and from Ranee during the workshops and festival. Even though she hadn’t danced in choreographer, but she is equally gifted as an residencies she’s created to bring Bharatanatyam nearly 10 years, Ranee eagerly said yes. The ambassador. She has built a Minnesota dance into every corner of our state. experience inspired her to begin teaching and company that tours nationally and internationally Ranee may have landed in Minnesota by to resume her own dance studies, and—just as and is now world-renowned. She has broadened chance in 1978, but she remains here by choice. important—it started her on a journey toward her reach artistically as well, expanding the We couldn’t be more fortunate that she decided thinking of herself as an artist. dance form beyond its traditional boundaries. to stay, and that she accepted that long-ago Ranee’s life hasn’t been the same since Her fearless, innovative collaborations with invitation to dance. that invitation, and neither has the Minnesota non-Indian musicians, artists, writers, and RANEE RAMASWAMY 2011 MCKNIGHT DISTINGUISHED ARTIST CONTENTS PAGE 2 3 13 18 20 21 Artist’s Statement Many Lives Translation, Shared Vision Superhero One-Woman Tour Ranee Onstage Transformation, Aparna Ashwini de Force Ramaswamy Linda Shapiro Transcendence Ramaswamy Ramaswamy Catherine Shana Sippy Egenberger 23 25 27 39 45 47 48 Masterful Beyond the Box Gestures: Notes Ranee Ramaswamy: Selected McKnight About the Award Merging Louise Robinson from Ranee’s Guru, An Artist’s Life Performances Distinguished Dr. Sunil Family, Friends, and Artists Kothari Colleagues ARTIST’S STATEMENT My parents believe in horoscopes. Since I was All that he said came true until my husband I am no longer married to the man the born, everything about my life was planned and I came to the United States. I was 26 and we astrologer predicted, but I have the according to what the astrologer predicted. had a three-year-old daughter. companionship and love of the one I chose “She will get married young,” he said, seated in here in Minnesota. The astrologer said I would Then America took over. The astrologer’s a small hut in Kerala, reading from palm leaves have a son and a daughter, as having two predictions seemed to disappear into the as he chewed tobacco. My father the scientist daughters would be considered a curse in India. background and I appeared. and my grandfather the medical doctor made an I have two beautiful and amazing daughters annual trip: waking up at four a.m., traveling by If someone had told me and my parents 30 who are my two hands. jutka (a horse cart), then a bus, and after that years ago that I would be dancing all over the I have the best teacher in the world, the a boat to get to the village of Aroor, where the globe with my daughters in tow, that I would best dancers in my company, the best in-laws, family astrologer lived. have this amazing dance company, that I would the most amazing friends. My parents, who gave be recognized for my work, we would have He planned my entire life. He read the me everything so I could practice my art, are laughed our heads off. name of my husband-to-be, his career, how healthy and are living with me. many children we would have, all the problems My favorite quote comes to mind: So what if I die at 64? I am already in Heaven! and good-luck periods in my life, when I would Yesterday is history, die, what I would die of. According to him, I am supposed to die at 64. Tomorrow a mystery, Today is a gift, That’s why it’s called the present! RANEE RAMASWAMY 2011 MCKNIGHT DISTINGUISHED ARTIST 2 MANY LIVES ONSTAGE by Linda Shapiro At a rehearsal in Ragamala Dance’s Uptown rippling fingers, they engage in what looks Ragamala Dance company have imbued the Minneapolis studio, Ranee Ramaswamy sits like a communal ritual. While they move precision and sculptural clarity of Bharatanatyam alert and cross-legged in a black wicker chair as through space, their meticulously precise with a thoroughly contemporary exuberance. five women rest tranquilly in a deep knee bend, gestures and rhythms throb with a sense of joy Ranee has collaborated with composers, poets, ready to perform the first part ofIhrah: Sacred and release. It’s like a display of cascading visual artists, photographers, and artists in Waters, a hymn to the Ganges. The work brings fireworks—geometric patterns filled with other dance styles—from flamenco to Balinese together music by American composer Marc volatile explosions of light. to Western modern dance—creating what Anderson and Indian composer Raman Kalyan, she calls “conversations with other forms.” and poems by Minnesota writer Jim Moore; it T T T Through her willingness to embrace new ideas, was inspired by Ranee’s experience of observing she has created works where cultural and 40,000 people gathered on the shore of For more than three decades, Ranee aesthetic traditions infiltrate one another the Ganges, launching lotus flowers embedded Ramaswamy has been revealing the vitality of with élan. in small lamps onto the sacred waters. Bharatanatyam to Western audiences by paying This work is not something for which meticulous attention to its classical form while Ranee was groomed. She fell in love with the “Valli says a practice should be reinventing the substance of what this ancient dance classes she took as a child, but her your religion,” Ranee tells them, referring art can tell us about ourselves and our world. parents’ expectation was that she would to her longtime teacher, Alarmel Valli. As the Creating dances that pulsate with rhythmic eventually quit dancing, get married, and dancers begin to make gestures of scooping excitement and the visceral narration of stories become a housewife. Very few middle-class water and bringing it up to their faces with both ancient and modern, Ranee and her Indian girls became professional dancers. The long process of study that ends with a solo début in the West as conflicting and contradictory contemporary Western audiences, the sense of concert, an arengetram, involves large fees points of view. one body containing diverse (and often dueling) and expenses for costumes. Ranee’s father, Audiences new to Bharatanatyam are often obligations and desires most certainly is—as is the well-known entomologist Dr. T.N. seduced by the fluidity with which the dancers the need to reconcile these opposing forces into Ananthakrishnan, wanted to save the money transform themselves from one deity, character, a state of harmony. and put it toward her dowry. or emotional state into another. It is the very “In those days,” Ranee says, “in my nature of the technique that informs this kind T T T family it was not considered proper of protean presence. The dancers embroider for a woman to dance onstage.” rhythmic strands through slapping feet, There is a saying in India that dancers are not In ancient Hindu temples, female dancers pliant torsos, highly articulated hands, arms, reincarnated because they live so many lives spoke directly and personally to the gods—who even faces (there is a whole vocabulary of onstage.