MeshGround is a platform for movement arts which was launched last year to cater to the inner artiste in you. Formed by a collective of dance artistes and educators Umeshi Rajeendra, Shonaka Ranatunga, Eva Priyanka Wegener, Ayumi Fernando, and Hope Rajasinghe with advisors Jesse Zaritt and Sudesh Manthillake and Board of Directors Dinali Dandeniya, Shanaka Amarasinghe, and Shiyani Saranapala, MeshGround was formed to bring people and ideas together and to challenge thinking through multi-layered practises, performances, conversations, and exchanges.
Over the last year, the platform has grown and expanded, and they’ve introduced several new programmes in 2022.
Brunch spoke to the representatives of MeshGround to see how the last year has been and what new changes we can expect.
In conversation with Umeshi Rajeendra, she told us that MeshGround is an artistic, educative, and critical network of exchanges that helps stimulate creative and independent dance thinkers. Through the platform, they hope to encourage a weave of action through multiple practises and dialogues in a day and age where radical change is required for an inclusive and sustainable change.
We asked how one would go about shaping the direction of such a platform, like they have, in just a year. Rajeendra explained that in order to do this, they have developed four essential learning goals that help to shape the platform’s direction. “The first is sustainability – where students will be immersed in anatomically sound training that weaves historical and emerging forms through a somatic and critical lens. Next you have creativity – where the students will develop tools and ideas with regard to ‘making’ dance with a critical lens and apply knowledge to fields outside of dance. This is followed by relationality – where students will engage with the world through a multiplicity of lenses individually and collectively.” Lastly, she stated that there is collectivity, through which students will build relationships and develop networks via consistent interactions with artistes in the art world locally and globally.
She added that these learning goals are mapped across six different programmes: Techniques and Pathways, Intensives, Artist Residency, Choreography Workshops and Labs, Dance Studies, and Professional Dance Training with their dance company Mesh Dance Theatre. Putting it simply, the MeshGround dives into a discipline-based dance training with critical discourses, engaging student artistes and dance practitioners with a holistic experience, all while valuing their individual voice to develop critical movement perspectives and examine the multiple dimensions of human existence. This, she explained, provides students with strategies, tactics, and tools to diverse pathways, thus expanding the ways they can access and think about movement physically, artistically, and educationally.
We asked her to share a bit on Artist Residency; a new programme. She explained: “One of the ways we can ensure the future of dance is through residency programmes, which, as we know, are rare in Sri Lanka.”
Speaking on why they are so essential, she informed us that residencies are a critical tool for artists to uncover their potential, eventually witnessed by the public in performance. This means that emerging and young artists are increasingly looking for community platforms like MeshGround for support. She added: “We are launching a three-month residency programme soon for socially conscious emerging artists from around Sri Lanka to explore their creative investigations with dancers who wish to experience various choreographic thinking and ideas, thereby providing an opportunity to establish relationships and potential collaborations in the future.”
Their main hope with this programme is that these residencies will be a stepping stone for these artists to branch off on their own and expand on the sphere of dance-making, while creating change for the better.
MeshGround is always happy to schedule a chat. For more on all their programmes, contact details and also for a little bit of background, visit their website www.meshground.org.