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Founded in 1992, award-winning mother/daughter artists Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy are the Artistic Directors of Ragamala Dance Company, a pioneering company rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. Over the last four decades, Ranee and Aparna have forged a path for culturally rooted performing arts organizations and made Ragamala a standard-bearer within the American dance landscape. The New York Times says, “Ragamala shows how Indian forms can be some of the most transcendent experiences that dance has to offer.”

Ranee and Aparna’s choreographic work has been commissioned and presented extensively throughout the U.S., India, and abroad, highlighted by the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Joyce Theater (New York), Lincoln Center (New York), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (MA), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), The Soraya (Southern California), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, International Festival of Arts & Ideas (New Haven, CT), Cal Performances (Berkeley), Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Just Festival (Edinburgh, U.K.), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (Chennai, India), and National Centre for Performing Arts (Mumbai, India), among others.

Ranee serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama. Among her recent awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship (Italy), Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship (Italy), United States Artists Fellowship, and McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Ranee immigrated to the United States in 1978 and, since that time, her work has merged the rich traditions and deep philosophical roots of her Indian heritage with her hybridic perspective as a first generation South Indian American, including bold experimental collaborations with national and international artists across forms and genres.

Aparna is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship (Italy), Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Research Fellowship (Italy), Joyce Award, and Bush Fellowship for Choreography, among others, and has been selected as one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2010. Her projects include solo, evening-length works which have toured widely, nationally and internationally, and commissions from the American Dance Festival and the Silk Road Ensemble.

Gloria McLean (Founder, Dancer, Choreographer, Dance Educator) is artistic director of LIFEDANCE/Gloria McLean and Dancers. She choreographs, teaches and performs from her base in New York City and Andes, NY.  LIFEDANCE is dedicated to the integration of body, mind and spirit through the creative process. McLean’s dances often collaborate with new music, art, language and the environment.  Her choreography has been presented in NYC and internationally, including the American Dance Festival, festivals in Ireland, Paris, Montreal, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, and China. In October 2019, she produced “Lucky Dragon 5 Voyage to Hope,” with sculptor Ken Hiratsuka, bringing together artists from around the world on the theme of world peace in memory of the those who perished in the Bikini Island nuclear tests in 1954. In June 2018 in Beijing, McLean collaborated with leading Chinese avant-garde choreographer Wen Hui and Ken Hiratsuka to produce “Stone.Paper, Line. Sky. Water”—dance interacting with drawing, live stone carving, water and audience in the unique 3-story architectural space of painter Huang Rui’s Cloud Pavillion.  In 2012 McLean’s “Dancing Without Illusion” paid tribute to painter Will Barnet. Her video “Twice Marked” was exhibited at Brattleboro Museum in 2008 and the ADF Dancing for the Camera Festival 2009.

Teaching credits include: Professor of Modern Dance for two years at Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea (2009-2011);  Henry-Bascom Visiting Professor at UW/Madison (2000); George Washington University (1997 and 2000). Adjunct positions and Guest Artist residencies at Manhattanville College, American University, Dowling College, Hofstra University, University of Texas/Edinburgh and San Marcos, and numerous others. She first received acclaim as a leading member of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1982-1993, performing major female roles in the repertory, teaching at the Hawkins School, and touring the U.S. and internationally. Currently McLean is President of the American Dance Guild producing festivals live and online. She teaches live and through zoom.

“I make dances to celebrate human existence, the miracle of the expressive body, with other artists, people, places, forms, media, with ideas that inspire us, and speak to our shared condition.  I am. It dances.”

LAR LUBOVITCH is one of America’s most versatile and widely seen choreographers. He founded the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Over the course of 54 years, it has gained an international reputation as one of America’s top dance companies, produced more than 120 dances and performed before millions across the U.S. and over 40 countries. Many other major companies throughout the world have performed the company’s dances, including American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, and more. Lubovitch has created ice-dancing works for Olympians John Curry, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Brian Orser, JoJo Starbuck, and Paul Wylie, and he has created feature-length ice-dance specials for TV: “The Planets” for A&E (nominated for an International Emmy Award, a Cable AceAward, and a Grammy Award) and “The Sleeping Beauty” for PBS and Anglia TV, Great Britain. His theater and film work includes Sondheim/ Lapine’s Into the Woods (Tony Award nomination), The Red Shoes (Astaire Award), the Tony Award-winning revival of The King and I (on Broadway and in London’s West End), Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame in Berlin, and Robert Altman’s movie The Company (American Choreography Award). In 2016, he premiered “The Bronze Horseman,” based on the Pushkin poem, for the Mikhailovsky Ballet in Russia. In 1987, he conceived Dancing for Life, which took place at Lincoln Center. It was the first response by the dance community to the AIDS crisis, raising over one million dollars. Together with Jay Franke, in 2007 Lubovitch created the Chicago Dancing Festival, in collaboration with the City of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It presented 10 seasons entirely free to the public. Recent awards: 2007 named Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune; 2008 named similarly by Chicago Magazine; 2011 designated a Ford Fellow by United States Artists and received the Dance/USA Honors Award; 2012 his dance “Crisis Variations” awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse for outstanding choreography at the Bolshoi Theatre; 2013 honored for lifetime achievement by the American Dance Guild; 2014 awarded an honorary doctorate by The Juilliard School; 2016 received the Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement and the Dance Magazine Award, named one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition and appointed a Distinguished Professor at UC/Irvine. In honor of his company’s 50th anniversary, in 2018 he was presented with the Martha Graham Award for lifetime achievement.