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. 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 (Modern/African Diasporic 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. 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.
Praise for
Let the Crows Come
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 New York Times, critic’s pick
”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 Washington Post, ‘Best Dance of 2021’
“Ashwini is innovative not for the sake of trendiness but out of a sincere (even desperate) curiosity about what the art form can do.”
—Mallika Rao (Freelance writer - Atlantic, New York Times, New Yorker).
“There’s a creative act that can emerge in the search for what we need — or even for what we simply yearn. Ashwini Ramaswamy’s 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.”
—Kristin Lin, Editor, The On Being Project
“an exchange of imagery, movement, sound and rhythm stemming from ancient texts about crows traversing through time, space, life and death. When the three dancers performed together, the transference of impulse was so clearly evident, rippling from one body to the next. Riveting…compelling”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune, ‘10 Best Performances of 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. ”
—Minnpost, ‘25 Best Things We Saw in 2019’
“How does an artist emerge from an intergenerational, accolade-rich family business with her own identity? If you’re Ashwini Ramaswamy, you follow in your family’s footsteps. You also veer brilliantly in new choreographic directions with Let the Crows Come, a work of enchanting beauty, arresting movement, and inventive intelligence.”
—City Pages, ‘Artists of the Year’ 2019
Past Performances
The Lab, Minneapolis, MN
Carleton College, Northfield, MN
Lanesboro Theater, Lanesboro, MN
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale, AZ
Albany PAC, Albany, NY
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York, NY
Cowles Center for the Performing Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Modlin Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond, VA
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
David-Waldorf Performing Arts Series, Chickasha, OK
BroadStage, Santa Monica, CA