1.24 - Meena Murugesan

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Chew on This

Meena Murugesan
split/focus (13-min)
January 24, 2012
Kaufman studio 214


split/focus is a solo contemporary Indian dance work that strives to connect multiple meanings and points of focus. Can seemingly disparate objects/subject /concepts come into focus simultaneously? (background/foreground) Where is one's point of focus? (mudhra/nritta) Where can fragments of emotion, technique and meaning intersect? (abstract/narrative)

Feedback session facilitated by Shyamala Moorty of Post-Natyam.

Choreographic Consultant/Mentor: Professor Janet O'Shea (LA)
Sound Composer: Kaveh Nabatian (Mtl)
Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt (Mtl)
Movement Consultant: Shyamala Moorty (LA)
Rehearsal Director: Nova Bhattacharya(Toronto)

Meena's multi-disciplinary performance practice is fuelled by her
commitment to dance, visual imagery, personal transformation and social
change. Her hybrid choreographic vision stems from twenty-four years of
training in bharatanatyam, four years of study in afro-contemporary dance
and street dance forms, a decade of creating visual imagery and five years
of training in eastern energetic bodywork.

Meena's recent choreographies include *pou/voir* (25-minutes, 2011), *
reBuild* (15-minutes, 2009), *whirling wailing woman* (10-minutes, 2009), *
AVAL* (26-minutes, 2008), *Unravelled* (50-minutes, 2006), in addition to a
dozen other collective creations and numerous improvised live performances.
Since 2004, she has performed her work in Montreal, Toronto, New York,
Niger, Chile and Brazil.

Parallel to Meena's dance career, she is also a community arts educator with ten years of local and international experience collaborating with under-represented groups such as youth, people of colour and incarcerated women using video and movement.

Currently, Meena is an MFA Dance candidate at the University of California
in Los Angeles in the World Arts and Cultures/Dance department. She is also
working on a commission for the CanAsian Dance Festival (Toronto) to
premiere in February 2012.


Janet O'Shea: Mentor/Choreographic Consultant
Janet O'Shea is the author of *At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on
the Global Stage*(Wesleyan University Press 2007) the co-editor the *Routledge
Dance Studies Reader* (second edition) (2010), and a co-editor of the *Routledge
Online Encyclopedia of Modernism*. She has studied and performed bharata
natyam since 1988, while simultaneously pursuing it as a subject of
scholarly inquiry and is currently investigating ways of integrating her
study of this classical form with her ongoing interest in modern and
postmodern dance. She is Associate Professor in the department of World
Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kaveh Nabatian: Sound Composer
Kaveh is an award-winning filmmaker and musician based in Montreal. With degrees
in both Film Production and Jazz Studies from Concordia University, he
has directed both fiction and documentary films, music videos, and
television series. His films have played at over thirty international
festivals, from which he has won numerous awards. Much of his time as a
musician is dedicated to Bell Orchestre, an avant-chamber ensemble in which
he plays trumpet, keyboards, and an array of analog and electronic
instruments. Bell Orchestre has released two critically-acclaimed albums,
won a Juno award, toured Europe and North America extensively, collaborated
with the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and LaLaLa Human Steps, and done a
composition residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Kaveh also plays
with Little Scream and composes music for films (including his own),
orchestra, dance, and theatre.

Lee Anholt: Lighting Designer
Lee Anholt graduated from Simon Fraser University in 1990 with a BA in
Contemporary Dance. He has been lighting for dance since 1995 and has been
touring extensively since 2000. He has worked with Peggy Baker, Montréal
Danse, José Navas, Margie Gillis and Marie Chouinard among others. Lee has
also designed lights for various independant choreographers, including
Chanti Wadge, Chantal Lamirande, and others. He is currently working with
Louise Lecavalier. Lee likes beer and frisbee.