Ragamala Dance Company’s Children of Dharma explores life—forever sprouting, transforming, dissolving and renewing—through three characters from the Hindu epic The Mahabharata; these myths reveal the power of ancient cultures to reaffirm humanity’s relationship with nature and the sacred.  

Co-created by Aparna Ramaswamy, Ranee Ramaswamy and Ashwini Ramaswamy, Children of Dharma centers South Indian embodied rituals in the immigrant experience—upholding dance as a spiritual practice that can inspire, heal and transform.

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Ragamala Dance Company

Auburn University

“Soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious” (The New York Times), Ragamala Dance Company presents Children of Dharma, the latest work by Bharatanatyam choreographers Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy. Their creative partnership as mother and daughters centers South Indian embodied rituals in the immigrant experience—upholding dance as a spiritual practice that can inspire, heal, and transform. Children of Dharma takes inspiration from Keerthik Sasidharan’s novel The Dharma Forest, a re-envisioning of the epic text, The Mahabharata.

The Joyce Theater

Outstanding practitioners of the South Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, the Ragamala Dance Company fuses timeless stories and myths of the Indian subcontinent with contemporary themes of Indian diasporic experience. Sacred Earth is a breathtaking original work exploring the interconnectedness between human emotions and the environment that shapes them. Performed with live accompaniment from an Indian musical ensemble, the dancers create a sacred space to honor the divinity in the natural world and the sustenance we derive from it. The Ragamala Dance Company offers us “some of the most transcendent experiences that dance has to offer” (New York Times). Don’t miss it!

Ragamala Dance Company

Mar 25, 2026