Let the Crows Come would have been performed in Bowker Auditorium on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. Instead, Ashwini has been sharing videos from her home in Minneapolis detailing how the piece came to be.
Evoking mythography and ancestry, Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come depicts crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed. Using Bharatanatyam (south Indian classical dance) and Carnatic (south Indian classical music) as points of inspiration, creator Ramaswamy of Ragamala Dance Company collaborates with musicians, dancers, and DJ Jace Clayton. In a series of three dance solos with live music by three composers, the resulting work explores how memory and homeland channel both guidance and dislocation.
This video is an introduction to some of the concepts and movements in Let the Crows Come.
This video focuses on the first swaram, a short rhythmic sequence that begins the first solo of Let the Crows Come. She also includes excerpts from one of her favorite pieces, Shankara Sri Giri, choreographed and taught to her by the unparalleled Bharatanatyam artist Smt. Alarmel Valli.
In this video, Ashwini talks about the texts she used to form the structure of Let the Crows Come.
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