by Tom Strini
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Dance Critic
November, 1999
Indian and African cultures did not collide Thursday evening, when Ragamala Music and Dance Theater from Minneapolis and Milwaukee’s Ko-thi Dance Company got together at the Pabst Theater. Instead, they accommodated.
Ragamala’s Ranee Ramaswamy and Ko-thi’s Ferne Caulker brought their companies together in "Wordance," a suite in which they alternated before finally joining together. It was a good strategy. At first, the companies seemed worlds apart: the Bharata Natyam style tautly disciplined, poised, detailed, drawing you in; Ko-thi big, loose, powerful, bowling you over.
But commonalities emerged as the piece went on, the most significant being rhythm. Ramaswamy focused on the rhythmic, secular side of the modernized Bharata Natyam Ragamala is developing. And rhythm is the very soul of African music and dance. Caulker tightened up her forms, which can sprawl, to match Ramaswamy’s economy, and her dancers went into their close ensemble mind set to match the Indian company’s discipline. The two companies wisely kept to their own styles; they looked nothing alike, but commonalities of ideas behind the dance slowly took shape.
The things that are common to all concert dance--phrasing, geometry, shadings of attack, speed, posture, athleticism, and so on--began to assert themselves as time went on. These dances invited the viewer to compare and contrast and to recognize the underpinnings of form and style. African and Indian idioms began to look like different skins on the same muscles and skeletons.
This was so even though the highest values in Indian dance are beauty and refinement, and the highest values in African dance are energy and climactic buildup. Ramaswamy and Caulker wisely let their dancers do their own things well instead of each other’s badly.
When the two threads finally twine together, they do so on common ground. The Indian tradition of vocal percussion on nonsense syllables has its African counterpart. Ramaswamy called out her fleet, skittering rhythms as her dancers cut the air with their arms and patted the floor with their feet in elegant displays of virtuosity. Zonia Perry called out in more of a funk groove, and five Ko-thi dancers responded in kind. This went on for a while, and a funny thing happened; dancers on both sides of the divide began to incorporate subtle elements of the other’s style. It was witty and sweet, like gentle jokes among close friends.
Both companies looked strong. Caulker’s crew danced with enormous confidence and easy amplitude. Ragamala’s dancers, astonishingly swift of hand and foot, expressed the most complex rhythms with razor precision. I’ve never seen such projection of personality in Indian dancers. By the end of the night, you felt that you knew Ramaswamy, daughters Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy, Tamara Nadel and Kats Fukasawa, and you liked them a lot. (Only in America would a Japanese guy look perfectly at home doing Bharata Natyam with a company of women.)
Ko-thi filled out this rich, satisfying program with its South African Suite, one of Caulker’s best works, and a set by Ton Ko-thi, the youth training company. Ton Ko-thi has never looked better, and the audience of about 1,000 justifiably went mad for them.
