Awards
Creative Capital
Ranee Ramaswamy is a 2025 Creative Capital Award Recipient: The Liminal Museum (in-development)
The past is present, because it is worth remembering. The artists undertake The Liminal Museum in response to the passing of their mother/grandmother Menaka Ananthakrishnan in 2023. This project traces stories of their family as a microcosm of women in traditional societies. The artists envision an intimate experience of recorded stories and personal artifacts in conversation with the Ramaswamys in live rehearsal, crystallizing how traditions are passed on, regenerated, and reinvented.
Bogliasco Foundation
Spring 2020 Fellowship Recipient:
Fires of Varanasi
For millennia, Varanasi—the earth’s oldest continuously inhabited city—has symbolized the crossing place between this world and the ‘far shore.’ As first-generation Indian-American choreographers, Ranee, Aparna, and Ashwini (mother and daughters) explore the birth-death-rebirth continuum in Hindu thought to examine immigrant experiences of life and death in the diaspora and the tenacity of people and cultures across time.
Photo by Ed Bock
Guggenheim Foundation
Fellow: Awarded 2018
Field of Study: Choreography
Competition: US & Canada
McKnight Foundation
Distinguished Artist Award, 2011
14 Fellowships for Choreography,
Awarded 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2012, 2020
2 Fellowships for Interdisciplinary Artists,
Awarded 1997-2002
Photo by Ed Bock
Rockefeller Foundation,
Bellagio Center (Italy)
Research Fellow, awarded 2017
National Council on the Arts
Appointed by President Barack Obama
2012-Present
Doris Duke Artist Award
Received 2014
Photo by Ed Bock
United States Artists
Received 2012
Photo by Ed Bock
Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals
Ranee Ramaswamy is a fiscal year 2021 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Purchase of video equipment in order to further develop ‘abinaya’, the expressive aspect of Bharatantyam, was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
