Art + Medicine

(sings in foreign language) I think, people are afraid that age and dance don't go together, and they associate it with youth. (sings in foreign language) My name is Ranee Ramaswamy, and the art that I practice is Bharatanatyam. (sings in foreign language) Bharatanatyam is one of the five classical styles in India. I started learning this form in India when I was about seven years old, came to Minneapolis in 1978 with my family. In 1992, I formed Ragamala Dance Company, mainly to make this art form accessible to all audiences. The two aspects of Bharatanatyam, one is called Nrita which is pure dance, rhythmic dance. It uses the entire body. (sings in foreign language) We dance bare feet, and it uses hand gestures with it. The other aspect is Abhinaya or expressive dance, where the dancer tells a story, where she is not only describing the exterior, but also the interior. So, how she feels or what is going on in that particular time and space. (sings in foreign language) So, as Bharatanatyam dancers start about seven years old, we have so much of physical training to use the feet, the knees, the legs, and for us, the basic positions, the play position. As you age, that play position becomes difficult because your knee starts to bother. When we had this two years of not really performing or rehearsing together, I've made a conscious decision that I do not want to do Nrita, rhythmic dance on stage. I still practice it because it keeps you agile. (sings in foreign language) This change that I made to concentrate more on the expressive aspect, actually, mines my lived experience and understanding of myth, stories, spirituality, knowledge that I have gathered over the years, they all match up together. And so, the output that comes out is a much more truthful. (sings in foreign language) Aging is a mystery, so different in the West versus East, until very recently, we don't have a system where the elderly move away to a old age home or a senior citizen's home. We all lived together, and I lived with my grandmother, and my mother lives with me. She's 93 years old, and I see where I am going to be. So, I think that I'm very excited about the possibilities of being old, yet being a carrier of the art form. We all can only hope and work towards getting older. As my husband says, if we are lucky, we may get to see what we can do in the future. But right this moment, I'm hoping year by year that I can continue doing in a small way what I love most, which is dance. (sings in foreign language) (bright upbeat music)