Meera Kanageswaran

🪔 About

Meera Kanageswaran is a passionate dancer, dedicated teacher, choreographer, and researcher specializing in Bharathanatyam. Born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, she began her formal Bharathanatyam training at the age of five under Smt. Kirupa Ratneswaran in Sri Lanka. She furthered her training in India with Shri. Madurai R. Muralidharan and Smt. Chithra Muralidharan. Kanageswaran holds an Hon. BA from the University of Toronto, an MA from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, and an MFA in Dance from York University. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. In 2006, Meera Kanageswaran founded Confidance Bharatham, a dance school based in Mississauga, Canada, where she serves as the principal teacher. Her performance career has taken her to stages in Germany, Switzerland, India, South Africa, the US, and Canada. She has choreographed numerous works, including "Destructive Desires," "Let's talk about it," "Balancing on the Hyphen," and "Engal Kathaikal." From 2000 to 2002, she actively introduced Bharathanatyam to the Christian community, choreographing dances for contemporary Christian music and conducting workshops in Switzerland. Kanageswaran's academic work focuses on contemporary Bharathanatyam. Her MFA thesis, titled "Introspection into the Evolution of Bharathanatyam in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora During and Post Civil War" (2021), investigates the potential of contemporizing and secularizing Bharathanatyam. As part of this thesis, she created two dance films, Iḻappu (also spelled Iappu) and Isolation, which explore themes related to the Sri Lankan Civil War and the COVID-19 pandemic. Her doctoral research aims to critically study current Bharathanatyam pedagogy to create more inclusive and accessible classrooms. Her vision is to utilize Bharathanatyam's storytelling capabilities to address present-day, relevant, and urgent narratives.