Baryshnikov Arts Center Presents NY Premiere Of Ashwini Ramaswamy's LET THE CROWS COME

Baryshnikov Arts Center will present the New York premiere of Minneapolis-based choreographer and dancer Ashwini Ramaswamy's Let the Crows Come, an experimental Bharatanatyam work, named one of the "Best performances of 2019" by the Star Tribune. Performances will take place Wednesday-Friday, April 8-10, at 7:30pm, at BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 West 37th Street, in Manhattan.

Let the Crows Come, which was developed during a 2018 BAC Residency and premiered as part of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series last November, is lauded for its "enchanting beauty, arresting movement, and inventive intelligence" (City Pages). Evoking mythography and ancestry, it uses the metaphor of crows as messengers for the living and guides for the departed-and in the process explores how memory and homeland channel guidance and dislocation.

In Let the Crows Come, Ramaswamy examines tradition, origin, and iteration through a genre-bending evolution of movement and music across cultural and corporeal boundaries. In a series of solos performed by three dancers with distinct artistic lineages and movement styles-Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam), Alanna Morris-Van Tassel (Contemporary), and Berit Ahlgren (Gaga)-the Bharatanatyam form is deconstructed and recontextualized to recall a memory that has a shared origin but is remembered differently from person to person. The original score, performed live, takes inspiration from Carnatic (South Indian classical) music. Composers Jace Clayton (aka DJ/rupture) and Brent Arnold have extrapolated from Prema Ramamurthy's Carnatic score, utilizing centuries-old compositional structures as the point of departure for their sonic explorations that move between different sound worlds.

Let the Crows Come features Ashwini Ramaswamy and dancer/choreographers Alanna Morris-Van Tassel and Berit Ahlgren. Music is performed by Jace Clayton (lead composer/ electronics), Brent Arnold (lead composer/electro-acoustic cello), Rohan Krishnamurthy (co-composer/mridangam), Roopa Mahadevan (co-composer/vocals), and Arun Ramamurthy (co-composer/violin).

Tickets for Let the Crows Come are $25 and can be purchased online at bacnyc.org or by phone at 866-811-4111. Running time is 60 minutes.

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