‘A Resurgence of Dance Education’

The Global Studies Seminar welcomes 2013 Denison graduate Umeshi Rajeendra presenting a talk titled “Transforming the Fruit: A Resurgence of Dance Education.”

Rajeendra offers a look at the historical events, cultural trends, and individual occurrences that led up to the emergence of dance education in postwar Sri Lanka. She is the founder and Chief Artistic Director at Mesh Academy of Dance

Rajeendra came to Denison from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and graduated in 2013 with a B.A. in dance and economics, and a minor in political science. Her senior independent research, supervised by Professor Sandra Mathern-Smith, was titled, “The Ubiquity of Hybridism: An Exploration and Celebration of In-between Spaces through Dance.”

For Rajeendra, creative movement is her first idiom. Even though she started dancing at the age of four, her interest began only when she was eight. Her passion and love for dance has only grown with time to enriching a rich landscape of genres and styles such as contemporary dance, post-modern dance, hip hop, African diasporan, jazz, ballet and kandyan dancing.

She would fuse different techniques she learned, trying not to label it. She would just do what it felt good doing by pushing herself physically and mentally. That’s contemporary dance for her, an expressive movement encompassing various styles of physicality.