Aparna R

🪔 About

Aparna Ramaswamy is a highly acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer, and co-artistic director of Ragamala Dance Company, which she leads alongside her mother, Ranee Ramaswamy. Raised in both India and the United States, Ramaswamy is a senior disciple of the legendary Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer Alarmél Valli from Chennai, India, known as one of India's greatest living masters. Her extensive training under Valli forms the bedrock of her creative aesthetic, which she describes as engaging the dynamic tension between tradition and innovation, ancestral wisdom and creative freedom. Through Ragamala Dance Company, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ramaswamy has developed a distinctive sub-genre that integrates a contemporary Western aesthetic with an Indian ethos. Her choreographic work spans from intimate solo presentations with live musical accompaniment to large-scale, multidisciplinary theatrical productions that have toured extensively across the U.S., India, and internationally. Her performances have been commissioned and presented by prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival, and the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai. Ramaswamy's significant contributions to the performing arts have been recognized with numerous accolades. Her honors include a 2016 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a 2016 Joyce Award from the Joyce Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship, and multiple McKnight Artist Fellowships for Dance and Choreography. In 2010, Dance Magazine named her one of "25 to Watch," and in 2011, she was jointly named "Artist of the Year" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune with her mother. She also received the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from Carleton College. Beyond her performance and choreography, Ramaswamy is dedicated to education and cultural discourse. She has served as a guest lecturer at various colleges and universities across the U.S., fostering conversations about cultural hybridity in the 21st century. She is an empaneled artist with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations of the Government of India and serves on the Board of Trustees of Dance/USA. As a teacher, she has educated numerous students in her unique Bharatanatyam lineage and aesthetic. Awards & Honours: Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2016), Joyce Award (2016), McKnight Artist Fellowships for Dance and Choreography, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Bush Fellowship for Choreography, Arts and Religion grant, Jerome Foundation Travel Study Grants, Artist Exploration Fund grant, Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award (2022), 25 to Watch (2010), Artist of the Year (2011).