BroadStage Presents The West Coast Premiere Of LET THE CROWS COME

Evoking mythography and ancestry, Let the Crows Come uses the metaphor of crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed. In a series of solos/trios, the Indian dance form Bharatanatyam is deconstructed and recontextualized with collaborators Alanna Morris and Berit Ahlgren, who infuse the work with their own traditions of Modern and African Diasporic dance and the Gaga movement from Israel.

This 60-minute work for three dancers with live music explores how memory and homeland channel guidance and dislocation. Featuring Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam technique), Alanna Morris (Afro-Modern technique), and Berit Ahlgren (Gaga technique), Bharatanatyam dance is deconstructed and recontextualized to recall a memory that has a shared origin but is remembered differently from person to person.

The original, live score features South Indian instruments, electroacoustic cello, and sound sampling/turntables. Composers Jace Clayton (dj/rupture) and Brent Arnold extrapolate from Prema Ramamurthy's original Carnatic (South Indian) score, utilizing centuries-old compositional structures as the point of departure for their sonic explorations. Additional compositions by Roopa Mahadevan (vocals), Arun Ramamurthy (violin), and Rohan Krishnamurthy (south Indian percussion).

The Washington Post named it a 'Best Dance of 2021' selection, writing, "a fascinating, beautifully developed exchange of dance styles. In separate but interconnected solos, the three women deconstructed and adapted the soft, yielding qualities of bharatanatyam and its moments of stillness and playfulness. Though each solo was different, certain shapes and contours reappeared - wide-leg stances, beckoning gestures, spiraling turns - as well as a spirit of inquiry and spiritual searching."

The New York Times describes the collaboration as "magnetic...the dancers joined forces as if the threads of Ramaswamy's imagination had united and flourished, making space, not just for more generations but for more ways of thinking. Even as the dancers matched and echoed one another's arms and feet, their interpretations were, at times, wildly - and certainly stylistically - different. Yet they were all capable of holding the stage with a similar intensity, as if they were dance spirits, one shadowing the other. And the music was just as important. For her experiment, Ramaswamy was drawn to how a D.J. remixes a song. How does a piece of music, or a dance solo, change and shift to reveal different facets over time? And how can that honor different generations? The crows came."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune said it was one of the 10 Best Performances of 2019 -- "an exchange of imagery, movement, sound, and rhythm stemming from ancient texts about crows traversing through time, space, life and death. Riveting...compelling". Minnpost said it was one of the 25 Best Things We Saw in 2019 -- "like a petite colossus, [Ashwini] has a foot in both worlds. Ragamala Dance Company treats the ancient dance form of Bharatanatyam as a living thing; in this new project, Ashwini pushes it further, creating three unique choreographic and sonic worlds with herself as the through line. Let the Crows Come is complex and fully formed, polished and sure. "

Kristin Lin, Editor, The On Being Project said, "There's a creative act that can emerge in the search for what we need - or even for what we simply yearn. Let the Crows Come is an exploration of the beauty that flourishes when this yearning is offered the space to grow into something of its own. The piece drew inspiration from Bharatanatyam dance to create a performance that brings into interplay tradition with modernity; ancestral memory with contemporary experience; and homeland with diaspora."

ASHWINI RAMASWAMY is committed to maintaining the beauty, technique, rigor, and values embedded in her Bharatanatyam lineage while forming a personal vision for collaborative, multidisciplinary performance experiences. Like a phantom limb, her Indian ancestry lingers within her, informing her artistic work and daily interactions; Ashwini's upbringing in both India and the U.S. has encouraged an aesthetic perspective with a hybrid compass. She has spent over 30 years studying Bharatanatyam from award-winning artists Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy (her mother and sister), and their guru, the legendary Smt. Alarmél Valli of Chennai, India since 2011. The New York Times describes Ashwini as "weaving together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine...there is a continual flow of energy coursing through her limbs."

As a founding member of Ragamala Dance Company, she has toured extensively, performing throughout the U.S. and internationally. Her choreographic work has been presented by the O'Shaughnessy, Cowles Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York, NY), The Yard (Martha's Vineyard, MA), Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts (Scottsdale, AZ), and The Just Festival (Edinburgh, U.K), among others. Ashwini has received commissions from the Liquid Music Series, Great Northern, Santa Monica College and Macalester College; residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, UNC Chapel Hill, Kohler Arts Center, the National Center for Choreography, the Bogliasco Foundation (Bogliasco, Italy) and Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France, 2023); support from the National Dance Project, MAP Fund, USArtists International, National Performance Network, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, South Asian Arts Resiliency Fund, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Dance and Choreography. Her work has been listed among the 'Best of the Year' in The Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnpost, and as a critic's pick in The New York Times. As a 2019 City Pages 'Artist of the Year, Ashwini's work was highlighted for 'illuminating Bharatanatyam's future."

Her current project, Invisible Cities, will premiere in 2023.

Let the Crows Come is commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series and is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project and the MAP Fund (both supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), and was developed in part during residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York, NY), and the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron (OH).

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