Performance by Ragamala Dance Theatre and Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara comes to MSUM stage
Indian culture and taiko drumming workshops open to the public
Scotland, Japan, Indonesia, China, New York, and Moorhead, Minnesota. Ragamala Dance Theatre, a Minneapolis-based dance company that tours every year around the world, appears on stage at Minnesota State University Moorhead Saturday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m. Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara, a taiko drumming group from Japan, joins them.
The two groups will present Sva, a highly-dramatic work featuring dance and taiko drumming. Sva resulted from a collaboration between the companies’ artistic directors, and has received rave reviews. Lightsey Darst of Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine wrote: “…this is unapologetically buff, bare-arm, samurai drumming, played on big drums whose hits reverberate in all the empty spaces of the body… The thrill that the dancers feel in their own strength and grace rolls across the audience; their happy and powerful beauty is one we understand and aspire to.…”
Dance Magazine writes: “[The women of Ragamala] can be fierce or fragile, stately or ebullient, spiritual or erotic…these dancers alter the very textures of their bodies from moment to moment—they thicken, sharpen, attenuate, and refine the highly inflected vocabulary of Bharatanatyam.”
Bharatanatyam is one of the oldest classical dance forms of India, with a history that goes back more than two thousand years. The style integrates elements of music, theater, poetry, sculpture and literature.
In addition to the evening performance, the dancers and drummers will present two 90-minute workshops at 11 a.m. Both workshops are free and open to the public.
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 on the Gaede Stage in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts. No drumming experience is necessary to participate.
The events are the last of this year’s MSUM’s Cheryl Nelson Lossett Performing Arts Series. Tickets for the mainstage performance are on sale now. Call the MSUM Box Office at (218) 477-2271 Monday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, go to www.mnstate.edu/perform.