Kalpana Raghuraman appointed Creative Associate with Dutch National Ballet
The Dutch choreographer Kalpana Raghuraman has been appointed as Dutch National Ballet’s new Creative Associate. Raghuraman will be associated with the company for a period of two years, in which the focus will be on collaboration, research and exchange, alongside the creation of productions.
Kalpana Raghuraman is a choreographer, dancer and anthropologist, and artistic director of the group Kalpanarts. By combining Indian dance forms with urban and contemporary dance, she has developed a new cross-border dance idiom.
Raghuraman will be presenting her first choreographic work as Dutch National Ballet’s Creative Associate in the spring of 2025.
Kalpana Raghuraman: “I’m really looking forward to joining forces with Dutch National Ballet. I greatly appreciate the company’s openness and their sincere interest in my vision of Indian dance and culture. Ballet and Indian dance have a rich shared history that is deeply rooted. As a cultural anthropologist and choreographer, I’ve been researching this history for many years. I’m delighted to be able to strengthen this connection and develop new dance vocabulary within it. It will bring these different worlds together on an equal footing and they’ll reinforce one another. I look forward to exploring new artistic possibilities, along with the teams of Kalpanarts and Dutch National Ballet, in this unique partnership.”
Ted Brandsen, director of Dutch National Ballet: “Kalpana Raghuraman has a unique view and inspiring vision of the differences and links between Indian dance, contemporary dance and classical ballet. As a Creative Associate, she’ll get the opportunity to explore this further with our artistic team and dancers. It’s interesting for both parties to see what this artistic convergence can lead to. So I, too, am eagerly looking forward to this exciting partnership.”
About Kalpana Raghuraman
Raghuraman has been artistic director of and choreographer with the dance company Kalpanarts since its foundation in 2015. As her mother ran an Indian dance school in Leiderdorp, Raghuraman became familiar with the many different styles of Indian dance from an early age. Originally, she was trained at her mother’s school as a classical Indian dancer, but she also learned other dance styles, such as jazz dance. From the age of 21, she organised her own dance productions. On completing her studies in cultural anthropology and sociology, Kalpana travelled regularly to India to take classes in the Indian dance traditions, where she learned a great deal about technique and repertoire.
Creative Associates with Dutch National Ballet
The Creative Associates form part of a broad enterprise by Dutch National Ballet in the area of talent development, which also includes initiatives like New Moves, the Choreographic Academy, NextSteps and the Junior Company.
Dutch National Ballet set up the Young Creative Associates in 2017. Over a period of several years, the Associates receive choreographic commissions and benefit from collaboration, exchange and mentorship in making artistic decisions. At the start of this theatre season, it was decided to drop the label ‘Young’, in order to admit more experienced choreographers to the initiative as well. Previous Young Creative Associates were the choreographers Wubkje Kuindersma, Sedrig Verwoert, Juanjo Arques, Peter Leung and Milena Sidorova.
Milena Sidorova, a Young Creative Associate since 2021, will now become a Creative Associate with Dutch National Ballet, starting this season. Her appointment, like that of Raghuraman, is for a period of two years.
