(GLASSBORO, NJ) -- Rowan University's Marie Rader Presenting Series presents Ragamala Dance Company with "Sacred Earth" on Saturday, January 31, 2026 at 7:30pm. Performed with live music, Ragamala’s stunning Bharatanatyam dancers create a sacred space to honor the divinity in the natural world and the sustenance we derive from it.
Inspired by the ephemeral arts of kolam rice flour ritual, indigenous Warli painting, and the Tamil Sangam literature of India, Sacred Earth is Artistic Co-Directors Aparna Ramaswamy and Ranee Ramaswamy’s singular vision of the beautiful, fragile relationship between nature and man.
Runtime is approximately 70 minutes with no intermission. There will be a post-show Q&A with the artists immediately following the performance.
Tickets are $35 and available for purchase online. The event takes place in Pfleeger Concert Hall (201 Mullica Road) in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Founded by Ranee Ramswamy (Artistic Director) in 1992, Ragamala Dance Company celebrates the Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. Together with daughters Aparna Ramaswamy (Executive Artistic Director) and Ashwini Ramaswamy (Choreographic Associate) they weave ancestral ritual, lineage, and contemporary resonance.
Working in an intergenerational partnership between mother and daughters, their creative vision merges the rich traditions and deep philosophical roots of their Indian heritage with their hybrid perspective as first generation Indian-Americans. The Ramaswamys’ lineage of Bharatanatyam, pioneered by their guru, the legendary Padma Bhushan Smt. Alarmél Valli, sees dance, music, and poetry as one dynamic, interconnected language that is the bedrock of their creative aesthetic.
Among their awards and honors are a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship (Italy), Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship (Italy). Their choreographic work has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Lincoln Center (New York), American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), among others, and supporters of their work include the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, MAP Fund, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. They have developed work in residence at MANCC (the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography), the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth, and during an NPN residency at The Yard.
Ranee currently serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama. She is a recipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, a Bush Fellowship for Choreography, and 15 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Choreography and Interdisciplinary Art, among others.
Aparna is recipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Joyce Award, a Bush Fellowship for Choreography, and four McKnight Artist Fellowships, among others. Described by The New York Times as “thrillingly three-dimensional...rapturous and profound,” she was selected as one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2010. She is an empaneled artist with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and her solo work, with live music, has toured the U.S. and internationally.
Now in its 32nd season under the leadership of Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy and Choreographic Associate Ashwini Ramaswamy (mother and daughters), Ragamala Dance Company has been hailed by The New York Times as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious.”
Over the last four decades, Ranee and Aparna’s practice in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam has shifted the trajectory of culturally rooted performing arts in the United States to create an exemplary company within the American dance landscape. Through both intimate solos and large-scale theatrical works for the stage, The Ramaswamys empower the South Asian American experience. By engaging the dynamic tension between ancestral wisdom and creative freedom, they reveal the kindred relationship between ancient and contemporary that is urgently needed in today’s world. Ragamala Dance Company is a pioneering, intergenerational, family-run organization committed to the idea that while history is time bound, the stories we share are timeless. Ragamala’s work in the performing arts field is expansive. The company engages in a collaborative practice with myriad artists and aesthetics and is rooted in the idea of Bharatanatyam as a dynamic living tradition.
The Marie Rader Presenting Series (MRPS) at Rowan University is a curated performing arts series that uplifts the region’s cultural landscape. Focused on artistic integrity and inclusion, MRPS provides public offerings that reflect the innovation and quality consistent with Rowan University’s overall standards of high achievement and transformation, while providing unprecedented access for the community.
Because of the Marie Rader Series, you don't have to travel to New York or Philadelphia to see some of the most influential leaders in dance, music, theatre and beyond. This series is also designed to introduce you to artists you wouldn't otherwise encounter-- artists who reflect not only the future of performing arts, but who help us envision a better world, right now, right here in South Jersey.
The Marie Rader is made possible in part through generous support from the Henry M. Rowan Family Foundation via the Marie Rader Memorial Fund and through funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
