Classical Forms & Cultural Identity: Looking to the Past to Look Forward

Ashwini Ramaswamy has practiced the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam—a living, breathing movement language that conveys the range of human experience—for over 30 years. Decades of dance training from her teachers - mother Ranee Ramaswamy, sister Aparna Ramaswamy, and the legendary Smt. Alarmel Valli of Chennai, India – has allowed her to uphold the balance between technical rigor, physicality, grace, and expressive authenticity that is the hallmark of their Bharatanatyam lineage. This meticulous training has given Ashwini a robust foundation upon which to build her own structures.

As a founding member of Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy’s Ragamala Dance Company, Ashwini has toured extensively, performing throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India, highlighted by performances at The Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center Out of Doors (New York, NY), the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), American Dance Festival (Durham, N.C.), Music Center of Los Angeles, the Festival of Arts and Ideas (New Haven, CT), Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Bali Arts Festival, National Centre for Performing Arts (Mumbai, India), and Krishna Gana Sabha (Chennai, India). As a soloist, she has performed at the Just Festival (Edinburgh, U.K.), the Ritz Theater (Minneapolis, MN), Northrop (Minneapolis, MN), Carleton College (Northfield, MN), the Drive East Festival, and Erasing Borders Festival (New York, NY).

Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with NYU, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and is currently a fellow at Harvard University, Drexel University, and the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. His latest choreography project, the Ballet des Porcelaines, premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Dec 2021 and will tour throughout 2022. He is a Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Dance at Carleton College in Fall 2022, and was just named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center.