Mesma Belsare

Mesma Belsare is a Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer and oil painter whose stage career spans more than two decades. She trained under Sri Shankar Hombal at Kalapadma Dance Academy in Bhopal and under Padmashri Geeta Chandran at Natya Vriksha in New Delhi, and holds a diploma in Bharatanatyam from Indira Kala Sangeet University. Her dancing draws on the Thanjavur bani, carrying the Swarna Saraswathi lineage and the Dandayudhapani Pillai style, and she has also worked with Dr. Maya Kulkarni.

As a soloist she has performed at Lincoln Center, the Asia Society and the Alvin Ailey Theater in New York, the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, La MaMa, the Battery Dance Festival, the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, the India International Centre in New Delhi and the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai. The New York Times called her dancing "a tour de force... a true act of transcendence and religious immersion." Her choreography includes NARCISSUS (2025), SIREN (2024), Jatayu (2023) and Plato's Cave (2020), along with the dance films Chinnamasta (2022) and In the Creator's Gaze (2020). She also travels widely in the United States to speak on LGBTQ representation in Vedic India and on gendered movement in Bharatanatyam.

She held a 2022-23 Dance/USA Fellowship funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a 2024 Individual Artist Fellowship for painting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts. Earlier support came from the Cambridge Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts and a Government of Delhi scholarship for advanced training in Bharatanatyam and Indian classical music.