Community Calendar

A part of Bates Dance Festival's epic Performance Series!

Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities reimagines Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel into an epic performance that spans dance genres. Using Calvino’s kaleidoscopic prose and Indian creation myths as a guide, Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities features a 10-member ensemble of dancers trained in four distinct dance styles (Bharatanatyam, Breaking, Gaga technique and Modern/African Diasporic) and original animation by Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad. The dance comes alive as the distinctions in form speak to and play off of each other. Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities creates a visceral space where we can feel both the immediacy of the contemporary world and the energy of past generations vibrating on stage.

Ragamala Dance Company was founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy, and is under the leadership of Co-Artistic Director Ranee Ramaswamy and Executive Artistic Director Aparna Ramaswamy, and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters). Rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, the company has been hailed by The New York Times as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious.”

Ashwini Ramaswamy’s work reframes how culturally rooted performance is represented in the U.S As Choreographic Associate of Ragamala Dance Company, she has performed at prestigious venues nationally and internationally. Her projects/initiatives are supported by awards from Creative Capital, National Dance Project, and MAP Fund, and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bogliasco Foundation (Italy) and Camargo Foundation (France), among others.

A part of Bates Dance Festival's epic Performance Series!

Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities reimagines Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel into an epic performance that spans dance genres. Using Calvino’s kaleidoscopic prose and Indian creation myths as a guide, Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities features a 10-member ensemble of dancers trained in four distinct dance styles (Bharatanatyam, Breaking, Gaga technique and Modern/African Diasporic) and original animation by Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad. The dance comes alive as the distinctions in form speak to and play off of each other. Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities creates a visceral space where we can feel both the immediacy of the contemporary world and the energy of past generations vibrating on stage.

Ragamala Dance Company was founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy, and is under the leadership of Co-Artistic Director Ranee Ramaswamy and Executive Artistic Director Aparna Ramaswamy, and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters). Rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, the company has been hailed by The New York Times as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious.”

Ashwini Ramaswamy’s work reframes how culturally rooted performance is represented in the U.S As Choreographic Associate of Ragamala Dance Company, she has performed at prestigious venues nationally and internationally. Her projects/initiatives are supported by awards from Creative Capital, National Dance Project, and MAP Fund, and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bogliasco Foundation (Italy) and Camargo Foundation (France), among others.

A part of Bates Dance Festival's epic Performance Series!

Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities reimagines Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel into an epic performance that spans dance genres. Using Calvino’s kaleidoscopic prose and Indian creation myths as a guide, Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities features a 10-member ensemble of dancers trained in four distinct dance styles (Bharatanatyam, Breaking, Gaga technique and Modern/African Diasporic) and original animation by Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad. The dance comes alive as the distinctions in form speak to and play off of each other. Ashwini Ramaswamy + Kevork Mourad: Invisible Cities creates a visceral space where we can feel both the immediacy of the contemporary world and the energy of past generations vibrating on stage.

Ragamala Dance Company was founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy, and is under the leadership of Co-Artistic Director Ranee Ramaswamy and Executive Artistic Director Aparna Ramaswamy, and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters). Rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, the company has been hailed by The New York Times as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious.”

Ashwini Ramaswamy’s work reframes how culturally rooted performance is represented in the U.S As Choreographic Associate of Ragamala Dance Company, she has performed at prestigious venues nationally and internationally. Her projects/initiatives are supported by awards from Creative Capital, National Dance Project, and MAP Fund, and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bogliasco Foundation (Italy) and Camargo Foundation (France), among others.

A part of Bates Dance Festival's epic performance series! :

A carcass leaves an imprint of a version of us we are no longer, a “skin,” a container that we have “left behind”. Like the residue of the body’s presence, the residue of our carcasses resonate with layered experience. Space Carcasses gathers experience embedded in the walls of hundreds of years old buildings separated by oceans and floating in the dust of thousands of years of the earth redistributing itself…and asserts the body’s capacity to wear it all, what we made, what was made of us, where we were, where we are. Like a garment. And like a garment, also perhaps, to take it off.

Since 1997, alongside a career in arts education leadership, Onye has been presenting choreographic work nationally and internationally at venues such as Seattle Festival of Improvisational Dance (WA), Kaay Fecc Festival Des Tous les Danses (Dakar, Senegal), La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba), McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA), and danceGATHERING (Lagos, Nigeria). Recent work includes Touch My Beloved’s Thought, a collaboration with composer Greg Ward and Project Tool.

Space Carcasses is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), The QDance Center (Lagos, Nigeria), Hope Mohr Dance – The Bridge Project (San Francisco, CA) and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org. Space Carcasses was also made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and in part through an NCCAkron Research Residency and an EMPAC Production Residency.

A part of Bates Dance Festival's epic performance series! :

A carcass leaves an imprint of a version of us we are no longer, a “skin,” a container that we have “left behind”. Like the residue of the body’s presence, the residue of our carcasses resonate with layered experience. Space Carcasses gathers experience embedded in the walls of hundreds of years old buildings separated by oceans and floating in the dust of thousands of years of the earth redistributing itself…and asserts the body’s capacity to wear it all, what we made, what was made of us, where we were, where we are. Like a garment. And like a garment, also perhaps, to take it off.

Since 1997, alongside a career in arts education leadership, Onye has been presenting choreographic work nationally and internationally at venues such as Seattle Festival of Improvisational Dance (WA), Kaay Fecc Festival Des Tous les Danses (Dakar, Senegal), La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba), McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA), and danceGATHERING (Lagos, Nigeria). Recent work includes Touch My Beloved’s Thought, a collaboration with composer Greg Ward and Project Tool.

Space Carcasses is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), The QDance Center (Lagos, Nigeria), Hope Mohr Dance – The Bridge Project (San Francisco, CA) and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org. Space Carcasses was also made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and in part through an NCCAkron Research Residency and an EMPAC Production Residency.

This annual event is a Bates Dance Festival favorite and not-to-be-missed. Moving in the Moment is a structured improvisational performance directed by Paul Matteson and featuring festival faculty and musicians, as well as guest artists. It is real time collaboration that highlights the skill and openness of the performers as they take risks and move together in front of a live audience. Join us for a one-time only, one-of-a-kind performance!

Bates Dance Festival is happy to partner with The Flatlands Dance Film Festival to curate an evening of screendance that touches on the themes of containment through space, place, and time as found in Onye Ozuzu’s Space Carcasses. Drawing from finalist submissions from the last three years of The Flatlands Film Festival, a BDF panel has chosen short films that highlight these themes and offer deeper insight into the intersection of dance and media. The selected films will be announced in April.

The Flatlands Dance Film Festival is dedicated to supporting and presenting Dance Cinema, a medium that explores and innovates the intersections between filmmaking and dance making. The festival builds educational platforms, encourages dialogue, and promotes a diverse range of cultural perspectives from around the globe.

This annual event is a BDF favorite and not-to-be-missed. Moving in the Moment is a structured improvisational performance directed by Paul Matteson and featuring festival faculty and musicians, as well as guest artists. It is real time collaboration that highlights the skill and openness of the performers as they take risks and move together in front of a live audience. Join us for a one-time only, one-of-a-kind performance!

Bill T. Jones’s joyful tour-de-force, D-Man in the Waters (1989), is a true classic of modern dance and a two time Bessie Award-winning work. It is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit that guides audiences through loss, hope and triumph. Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20 the work is one of the finest examples of the post- modern aesthetic and was featured in PBS’s landmark film Dancing in the Light – Six Dances by African-American Choreographers. More recently, it was the subject of the 2023 Peabody Award-winning documentary Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man In The Waters.

Continuous Replay is a seminal work of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company that began as an accumulation of 45 shapes created by Arnie Zane in 1977. In 1991, three years after Arnie Zane passed away, Bill T. Jones expanded the work into the current version. Continuous Replay is a prime example of a work of rigorous form that also depends on the choices and agency of the performers. BDF students will perform onstage alongside Company members.

Over the past 43 years the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries on every major continent. In 2011, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company merged with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts of which Bill T. Jones is the Artistic Director and Janet Wong is the Associate Artistic Director.

The creation of work by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is produced by New York Live Arts and made possible in part by the company’s Partners in Creation: Anonymous (2), Anne Delaney, Zoe Eskin, Eleanor Friedman, Ruth & Stephen Hendel, Suzanne Karpas, Ellen Poss, Jane Bovingdon Semel, in memory of Linda G. Shapiro, Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker.

Bill T. Jones’s joyful tour-de-force, D-Man in the Waters (1989), is a true classic of modern dance and a two time Bessie Award-winning work. It is a celebration of life and the resiliency of the human spirit that guides audiences through loss, hope and triumph. Set to Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20 the work is one of the finest examples of the post- modern aesthetic and was featured in PBS’s landmark film Dancing in the Light – Six Dances by African-American Choreographers. More recently, it was the subject of the 2023 Peabody Award-winning documentary Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man In The Waters.

Continuous Replay is a seminal work of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company that began as an accumulation of 45 shapes created by Arnie Zane in 1977. In 1991, three years after Arnie Zane passed away, Bill T. Jones expanded the work into the current version. Continuous Replay is a prime example of a work of rigorous form that also depends on the choices and agency of the performers. BDF students will perform onstage alongside Company members.

Over the past 43 years the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of over 140 works. Founded as a multicultural dance company in 1982, the company was born of an 11-year artistic collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Today, the company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. The company has performed its ever-enlarging repertoire worldwide in over 200 cities in 30 countries on every major continent. In 2011, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company merged with Dance Theater Workshop to form New York Live Arts of which Bill T. Jones is the Artistic Director and Janet Wong is the Associate Artistic Director.

The creation of work by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is produced by New York Live Arts and made possible in part by the company’s Partners in Creation: Anonymous (2), Anne Delaney, Zoe Eskin, Eleanor Friedman, Ruth & Stephen Hendel, Suzanne Karpas, Ellen Poss, Jane Bovingdon Semel, in memory of Linda G. Shapiro, Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker.