When Aparna Met Art

By Mike LaMont
Contributing Writer

Two groundbreaking performing arts collectives which have toured the world have joined forces to rave reviews and their next stop is Moorhead.

MSUM will host Ragamala Dance Theatre, a Minneapolis-based Indian dance group, and Wadaiko Ensemble TOKARA, a Japanese drumming group based in Nagano, Japan, for a performance of a collaborative effort called “Sva (Vital Force)”.

Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, co-creative directors of the Ragamala Dance Theater, and Art Lee, creative director of Wadaiko Ensemble TOKARA created “Sva (Vital Force)” to explore the common threads of spirituality and oneness with nature that run through both Hinduism and Shintoism.

The groups debuted “Sva (Vital Force)” at the New Victory Theater in New York City. After a 2-week run on Broadway, three other accompanying pieces were added to the performance.

In a review of “Sva (Vital Force)” the Minneapolis Star Tribune said, “Ragamala astounds audiences with works that expand one’s perceptions of dance, cross-cultural collaboration, and spiritual meaning.”

Two Groups Meet Deep in the Heart of Texas

Aparna and Lee first met when they each had a performance in a festival in Ft. Worth, Texas. They hit it off right from the start and have been collaborating for three years now.

“We were fascinated and impressed by the complexities of rhythm and their vocal technique,” said Aparna.

“We mutually really like each other,” said Lee. “We talked about ‘We should do something, collaborate together,’ and that’s how it came to fruition.”

The Ragamala team developed the choreography for “Sva (Vital Force)” and then traveled to Japan where they introduced the piece for Lee.

“I just worked with what I saw,” said Lee. “It was music that was inspiring both to taiko and Bharatanatyam.”

Lee says the collaboration was a natural fit when piecing the dance and music together.

“There wasn’t much of a challenge,” said Lee. “The two disciplines are very similar with how they’re learned and how they’re taught.”

When choreographing “Sva (Vital Force),” Aparna said she was mindful of staying true to each art form so that nothing would be lost in translation.

“When we collaborate we don’t compromise either of the forms,” said Aparna.

Some of the Bharatanatyam choreography was crafted to look like the sweeping movements of taiko, but the movements are still within the Bharatanatyam canon.

A Guru Chooses a Protégé

Aparna began learning Bharatanatyam under her mother when she was five or six. When she was seven their current guru, Alarmel Valli, came to Minneapolis to teach class. Impressed by young Aparna’s talent, Valli asked her to come to India for direct tutelage.

Valli is known not only for being the world’s leading exponent of Bharatanatyam but also for carrying Bharatanatyam into the modern era without compromising its rich traditions.

Aparna approaches the performance of Bharatanatyam as a way of communicating with an audience. She said that words and poetry inform her choreography and that without them Bharatanatyam would not exist.

“When we dance we become the narrator and interpret the music,” said Aparna. She says one theme of “Sva” is relating the total experience of one day in the human life.

Ragamala’s other creative director is Aparna’s mother, Ranee.

Ranee began performing and teaching Bharatanatyam, one of India’s oldest dance forms, in the Twin Cities in 1978. She founded the Ragamala Music and Dance Theater in 1992 and has collaborated with a diverse range of artists such as poets, jazz musicians and vocalists, and tap, jazz and flamenco dancers.

“We’ve always been excited by collaborative opportunities,” said Aparna. “The goal of “Sva” was to find deeper meeting places within our respective art forms.
People consider Bharatanatyam to be an ancient form, but it’s not rigid—it has so much creative capacity.”

Adaptability has made Bharatanatyam one of India’s most popular and widely practiced dance forms, practiced by both male and female dancers. Yet it remains deeply rooted in Hindu mythology and Indian literature.

In January, Dance Magazine named Aparna one of the “25 to watch” among a selection of dancers from throughout the country, calling her “iconic and explosive.”

The magazine went on to say with unintentional irony that Aparna “infuses the formal rigor of Bharata Natyam with fluid spontaneity and rock star allure.”

“I don’t listen to a lot of rock or pop music,” Aparna said. “It just never occurs to me.”

Instead she prefers to listen to classical Indian music and Jazz. She enjoys John Coltrane in particular.

Although she often listens to music with the mind of a dancer, when she listens to jazz she achieves a Zen-like state.

“I don’t think about work much,” she said. “I can just be.”

Lee Finds His Footing in Taiko

Although the word “taiko” or “wadaiko” refers to the name of the instrument itself, taiko artists are much more than drummers. They also utilize choreography, vocalization and other musical instruments during performances to communicate with audiences.

Communication has been key to taiko drumming since its inception.

In addition to use in Japanese folk and classical musical traditions, taiko-style drums were originally used as a way to send signals to others within earshot—things like the coming of a storm; the beginning of a hunting excursion—and also to pray for rain and to strike fear into the heart of the enemy before battle.

Lee has a direct connection to the taiko of today. He was a performing member of a taiko ensemble called Osuwa Daiko, which was lead by Daihachi Oguchi. Oguchi pulled taiko up from its traditional roots and firmly planted it in modern performance art.

As the story goes, Oguchi was adapting an old taiko piece for a performance, and seeing taiko’s orchestral possibilities, got a group of taiko of different size and pitch and other percussion and melodic instruments together. The ensemble form of taiko performance soon became a hit in Japan and even America.

Oguchi helped found the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, which has performed in Hollywood movies and embarked on international tours since forming 40 years ago.

Lee was a first-year culinary arts student when he came across a poster for a taiko performance in Sacramento.

“I was drawn not only to the power of the drums and the movement but the discipline,” said Lee.

Lee first began studying Taiko with the Sacramento Taiko Dan in 1993 and eventually became a featured performer and instructor.

Before even setting foot in Japan, Lee joined Za Ondekoza, a seminal taiko group, for their U.S. and Japan Tour, which began and ended with concerts at Carnegie Hall.

Lee moved to Japan in 1998 to study taiko full-time and in November 2001 the Japanese government granted its first ever unsponsored artist visa to Lee, enabling him become the first non-Japanese to live the life as a professional taiko artist in Japan.

Lee found his footing fast in the world of taiko in Japan, becoming the first non-Japanese to win first place in the Solo Odaiko section of The Tokyo International Wadaiko Contest in October 2005.

Both Artists Keep the Audience in Mind

“I’m trying to make the audience happy and help them to understand what the feeling of the show is, because they are going to see something they’ve never seen before,” said Lee.

Aparna took to heart a lesson taught to her by a teacher: Make the art form come alive in the different senses. This lesson applies not only to the audience but to the performer as well.

“When a dancer is performing, one should see the music and hear the dance,” she said. “Performing is about making the art form come alive in the different senses.”
Both groups will also hold 90-minute workshops that are free and open to the public on their respective art forms beginning at 11 a.m. in the Roland Dill Center for the Arts.

Members of Ragamala will lead a workshop on Indian dance, art and culture. Workshop participants will learn basic dance gestures and draw kolams on the floor with rice flour. Kolams are geometric and intricate designs drawn fresh every morning by southern Indian women. The designs are thought to bestow prosperity and well-being to homes. The workshop is designed for participants of all ages.

Members of Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara will present a Japanese culture and taiko drumming workshop. No drumming experience is necessary to participate.

Adult ticket, $28; seniors, MSUM faculty/staff, $23; children/students, $12. Tickets for the mainstage performance are on sale now. Call the MSUM Box Office at (218) 477-2271 Monday through Friday from noon to 4pm. For more information, go to http://www.mnstate.edu/perform.

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If You Go

What: “Sva” (Vital Force)
Where: MSUM Hansen Theatre
When: Sat, May 1, 7:30pm
Info: 218.477.2271