Judy Sirota Rosenthal Photo
Lit in low yellows and oranges on the spacious stage of the University Theater, Aparna Ramaswamy was extending her arms to the audience, inviting the deities — deities of her own interpretation, she would later clarify — to join her on stage. Just to her right, Ranee Ramaswamy raised her arms methodically and, as if reaching through another dimension, opened the curtains to an emotion the audience members didn’t know was sitting in them. Beside them, Rudresh Mahanthappa wailed away on his alto saxophone, a low, wolf-like cry escaping from its throat.
Ranjna Swaminathan leaned back and half-closed her eyes. The air stilled around her. Mahanthappa took a gentle step back into the wings. Focusing on Aparna’s flitting, jingling feet, she began to play a sure, heart-like drumbeat as the other dancers faded into darkness.
Together, they were bringing rasa (the essence of emotion) and Bharatanatyam — a traditional form of Indian classical dance that operates in a language of 28 single-handed and 24 double-handed gestures and 40 to 45 different steps — to the audience in a completely new form, one elaborate step at a time. This was neither fusion nor hybridization, but something else entirely, something the audience hadn’t known they needed to see until it was in front of their eyes.
Welcome to Ragamala Dance Company‘s Song of the Jasmine, a majestic and physically eloquent collaboration among traditional Indian dance, Carnatic instrumentation, and twentieth-century jazz that the company performed last week to a packed University Theater as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Although the near – 90 minute performance, a journey to “explore the interconnectedness of the spiritual, the sensual and the natural that is the lifeblood of the Indian psyche,” existed completely without words, Song of the Jasmine’s conception and genesis were guided heavily by the writings of the Tamil mystic poet Andal, who left a profound effect on South Indian culture with her Nachiar Thirumozhi, or Sacred Sayings of the Goddess.
Written in poetic verse, Sacred Sayings of the Goddess is deeply and immediately profound to read and hear; each year, hundreds of South Indians sing the verses between December 15 and January 15, believing that it will bring them to their ideal partner or life mate.
Andal, said Aparna at a post-show talkback on Tuesday, “wrote this amazing poetry describing her love for the divine, for Vishnu in his different forms. It is deeply personal. She brought a community of women together to sing and to celebrate and to worship, so to bring together worship and the arts, and the personal, and the sacred, and the sensual all at one time.” It was “something that was completely inspiring and new to us.”
Song of the Jasmine was equally dazzling as it explored the duality between the sacred and sensual. When the lights first came up, Mahanthappa and the ensemble (Rez Abbasi, guitar; Raman Kalyan, Carnatic flute; Anjna Swaminathan, Carnatic violin; Rajna Swaminathan, mridangam) were playing to a blue- and purple-colored stage decorated with a dark, glinting cluster of brass bells. Dancers emerged from the wings, their movements trusting and precise. And then the magic began to happen: an artistic narrative, or Abhinaya, that conveyed two certainties. One: You are tiptoeing on the edge of something known yet unknown, and it is delicious. Two: You must, on gut feeling more than on a dare, allow yourself to jump in wholly, where the rhythm will soak every bone to the marrow.
The piece was a sort of seamless, meditative discussion in this way. At one point, Aparna Ramaswamy said, with her fingers and feet, give me your hands, your heart, and Rajna Swaminathan answered, yes, and I will give them wings. At another, company member Jessica Fiala leaped and Raman Kalyan, on an almost vocal Carnatic flute, answered. Add to that the jazz improvisation that Mahanthappa grew up with — influences not of Indian music but Grover Washington, Jr., Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins — and there was something addictive and spellbinding about the group and its ability to operate as a unit.
Their cohesion was the product of months of close collaboration between musical and physical composition. Every six weeks for a period of months, Mahanthappa and the dancers met for a weekend of intense work on one of the pieces that would ultimately make up the show.
“The ten people that you see on stage, that’s a very conscious choice … not only to connect as dancers and musicians, but as ten artists who believe in this work. We feel … we are creating something moving and deep and beautiful together. And what we’re doing is we’re painting a canvas of emotion, and then we’re adding the flourishes and the details and the lines.” Aparna said.
“I read somewhere yesterday that in order to do fusion — and I don’t think this is fusion — you have to give up rasa. Rasa is something that we put in and you feel. And if that’s taken away, what is left? We have tried to keep everything and dance to this phenomenal soundscape that’s being created. You can’t do this without working, without thinking about it,” Ranee Ramaswamy added. “When everything comes together, we do feel that this is a new form. It’s not something that existed. It came from something, and can’t exist without it, but what is happening onstage is totally unique.”