Umeshi Rajeendra - CoFounder & Artistic Director

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Umeshi Rajeendra (she/her) is a Sri Lankan/Ilankai-born dance artist, performer, choreographer, and educator whose work explores movement as a catalyst for solidarity, social change, and embodied resistance. As the Founder and Artistic Director of MeshGround, a Platform for Movement Arts, she engages the body as a site of kinetic knowledge and activism—navigating rhythmic in-between practices that reclaim hidden histories and choreograph shared spaces of belonging, where difference is not erased, but held in movement, resonance, and resistance.

Since 2012, Umeshi has created original works that intersect performance and critical inquiry, centering intersectional solidarity through dance. Her anti-colonial contemporary practice draws from a diverse movement background—including Ballet, Kandyan, Bharatanatyam, modern dance, floor work, West African diasporic styles, martial arts, and hip hop—all approached through a Global South lens that resists dominant narratives and affirms multiplicity.

She began her dance training at the age of six and holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Dance from the University of the Arts, USA, where she was a recipient of the President’s Fund for Excellence. She also holds a BA in Dance from Denison University, USA, where she was given special recognition for her senior dance research. 

Umeshi has worked with internationally renowned artists including Dada Masilo, Netta Yerushalmy, Jesse Zaritt, and others, gaining extensive experience across the United States, Europe, and South Asia. She currently teaches as a visiting lecturer at several universities and continues to deepen her research into embodied relational agency and atmospheric attunement—embracing discomfort, alterity, and co-presence as generative sites of performative inquiry.

Through MeshGround, Umeshi continues to nurture emerging artists and shape interdisciplinary practices rooted in justice, movement, and deep listening.

To learn more about her movement practice, read her interview here.