Dancer/choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy’s upbringing in both India and the U.S. has encouraged a hybrid artistic perspective. Heralding from a family of dancers/dancemakers, her chosen and inherited medium, the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam, is a living, breathing language with which to speak about the contemporary human experience. The foundation of Ashwini’s work begins with decades of dance training with her gurus – her mother Ranee Ramaswamy, sister Aparna Ramaswamy and the legendary Smt. Alarmel Valli of Chennai, India – to uphold the balance between technical rigor, physicality, grace, and expressive authenticity that is the hallmark of their Bharatanatyam lineage.
As a founding member and Choreographic Associate with Ragamala Dance Company, she has toured worldwide, and as an independent choreographer, received multiple grants, commissions, and residency opportunities, including commissions from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series (St. Paul), The American Dance Platform (NYC), and The Great Northern Festival (Minneapolis), residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC), UNC Chapel Hill (North Carolina), and the National Center for Choreography (Akron, OH), and support from the National Dance Project, the MAP Fund, and US Artists International, an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship and McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Dance and Choreography.