Varanasi, India is a city where past, present, and future mingle within a single space—the sacred city is a portal between the ancient and the current. We have created Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim as a narrative nested within a narrative, nested within another narrative—the art forms, philosophies, and rituals borne from our Hindu ancestry which remain a source of hope, solace, and truth; the pilgrim who travels through time and space singing and dancing the name of the Sacred; and finally, the powerful voices of those who journey from one home to another.

We began envisioning this project after the death of our father/grandfather away from his homeland of India. A devout Hindu, his desire was for his ashes to be scattered in the Ganges River in Varanasi just as our ancestors before him.

For millennia, Varanasi has symbolized the crossing place between this world and the "far shore." Cremation fires burn night and day, and one is surrounded by rituals of death, both beautiful and apocalyptic. Ours is a religious tradition that contemplates life and death as an integrated whole. Upon death, the funereal fires dissolve the five elements of the physical body in order to take these elements to a new body.

Our dance tradition of Bharatanatyam provides a rich and expansive lexicon that serves as our wellspring. With a history that goes back over two millennia, the form grows within and with each practitioner. Through this language, we celebrate body and spirit, and the joyous and healing quest for physical and spiritual transcendence.

The creation process of Fires of Varanasi began well before the pandemic, yet the themes of mortality and resilience became even more salient, and the sharing of stories and honoring of ancestors even more urgent. We are incredibly grateful to our commissioners and funders who made this work possible. We could not have created this work without the commitment of our dancers, musical and technical collaborators, and staff, who spent hundreds of hours with us and each other over Zoom and WhatsApp.

Finally, we dedicate Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim to the memory of our dear friend, Patricia Barretto, who lost her battle with cancer in March, 2020. Patricia was a visionary and a force, and we miss her greatly. Thank you, Patricia, for blessing this work with your light.

—Aparna Ramaswamy and Ranee Ramaswamy