Mesh Academy of Dance will be a vibrant, dynamic, and creative cross cultural establishment that awakens the love of dance through the integration of the body, mind and spirit. The main purpose of this initiative is to educate, enhance and cultivate “dance as an educative art form” in Sri Lanka. In a casual interview with the Daily Mirror Life, the driving force behind this initiative, Umeshi Rajeendra spoke to us about her inspirations, the academy and future plans.

What inspired you to start Mesh Academy of Dance?

Dance has always been a huge part of my life. I love the challenge of it, whether it be physically or mentally. It is one of the greatest challenges one can go through because you can never really accomplish dance as a whole. It’s a huge field with different variables. That is the best part of it. There’s always room for growth and improvement and through my years of dancing, I fell in love with the art of dance, teaching and creating, where I have my own voice in what I want to do.

Mesh Academy of Dance was born out of my love for this art and its value in shaping an individual’s personality and body through the mind, body and spirit. By maintaining a level of rigorous training, we aim to shape the mind to endure the challenging tasks and the body to evolve into the pinnacle of these challenges. While doing so, we teach a student not just the technicality and flexibility of the body’s natural lines, but also the creativity aspect, critical analysis and the application of choreography as an educative tool of expression. Students need to learn how to choreograph, how to express their emotions through dance, how to use different tools in creating and bringing out their voice. When this happens, we build not just dancers, but analytical dancers with the potential to apply their creativity and skills to other fields and industries. And luckily, for us, we are partnering with different types of US professors and choreographers in order to create an exchange for our students to be able to travel and get intensive weeks of training on a university level like a summer camp based on set criteria.

What are the different genres taught here?

I truly believe that it is important to have a ballet foundation. Not the classical ballet, but a contemporary ballet foundation. Thus, contemporary ballet, contemporary dance, post-modern dance, contemporary dance with hip-hop, and African jazz are some of the styles or genres that will be taught based on each term’s curriculum.

What are the age groups of the students?

4 upwards. 4 to 18 will be the school. 18 and above will split based on those who wish to pursue dance professionally and for those who wish to dance for fun. Even those in ages of 40 and above are welcome. Your age or gender doesn’t matter when it comes to dancing.

How can one be a part of the academy?

Registrations begin on the 1st of August. Details will be up during the show “Genesis” and on our Facebook page.

What benefits do they get from performing for Mesh Academy of Dance?

Students gaining a dance education from us with the main benefit of learning how to use their mindset, their emotions, their fears and their goals in creating movement. They will do this by understanding how the body responds technically and the mind, while simultaneously employing elements of weight, space, flow and time. Our goal is to inspire students through seeing the potential of their ability of unfolding even when the student cannot.

What are the future improvements you are planning on?

My vision is to put Sri Lanka onto the dance map of the world because we have the talent, the history and the stories to really show what we can do and achieve. Therefore, we want to take Sri Lankan dance to global levels. To do so, we are setting up a school to make this vision work as the foundation step. Over the years, we will progress on a step to step basis with a goal of establishing Sri Lanka as a dance hub in the world.

By Kamanthi Wickramasinghe