Meena Murugesan
Montréal 45° 30' 11.46" N, 73° 34' 11.30" W Dance Visual Arts Person
Meena is a dancer and filmmaker dedicated to creating sacred spaces. Through her art, she seeks to bridge barriers between culture, gender, community, class and form in order to explore the differences that separate/unite us and find the essence that binds us together. Her experience in training and performing 'Bharatha Natyam' - a south Indian dance form (25 years), film (10 years) and eastern energetic bodywork therapies (3 years), inspire her to find the spaces where these forums meet and have the power to raise consciousness. Meena has been fortunate to collaborate with remarkable artists, storytellers, dancers, musicians and activists in Canada, the United States, India, West Africa, Chile and Brazil.
Meena's multi-disciplinary artistic practice is fuelled by her passion for dance, visual imagery, personal transformation and social change. Through art, she creates, shares and encourages the expression of under-represented stories with the hope of re-balancing existing power dynamics within society. She strives to build bridges between culture, gender, community, class and art forms in order to explore the complexities of human existence, while acknowledging the intrinsic connections that link us together. Meena's hybrid choreographic vision stems from twenty-two years of training and performing the South Indian classical dance form Bharatha Natyam, two years of studying with contemporary African dance pioneer Zab Maboungou, a decade of creating visual imagery and five years of training in eastern energetic bodywork therapy. Her ongoing practice of Chi Kung, Shiatsu and Chi Nei Tsang continues to spark her quest to free the body/mind beyond the limitations of cultural codes and social expectations. Meena's desire to work and choreograph with movement in ways that fall outside the classical Bharatha Natyam form comes from a sincere need to express the complex realities of her modern urban experience. In addition, structured improvisation is an essential part of Meena's work as it allows her to draw upon the authenticity and magic that exists in the present moment.
She has developed this craft for the past five years, performing improvised Indo-contemporary dance works with remarkable live musicians and spoken word poets such as Bell Orchestre, LAL, Kalmunity Vibe Collective, Jason ‘Blackbird’ Selman, and Kamala Sundararajan. Until 2000, Meena toured internationally with the Nrithyalaya Dance Company under artistic director Vasantha Krishnan. In addition to more than a dozen improvised dance works, her choreographic repertoire includes: home/Body (2009, 40-minutes), AVAL (2008, 26-minutes), Unravelled (2006, 50-minutes) and Ekatva (2006, 15-minutes). Since 2004, Meena has performed her original choreographies and improvisational works in Canada, New York City, Niger, Chile and Brazil. Parallel to her dance career, Meena is a video artist and community arts educator with eight years of local and international experience collaborating with performing artists and marginalized groups such as youth, people of color and incarcerated women. She facilitates video and dance workshops in socio-political-cultural community organizations and is deeply inspired by the people who share these spaces. Currently, Meena is performing AVAL and developing two new choreographic works. She has also recently co-founded root*system with Anastasia Culurides and Pohanna Pyne Feinberg, a inter-disciplinary live arts ensemble that interplays elements of music, dance, video, lighting design, photography and soundscape to express the beauty, the tragedy and the surprises of life into tangible and multi-sensory experiences.