#dance intensive

NEW WAVES! 2018 PROGRAM & SCHEDULE A live, updated schedule can be found online at http://makedathomasinstitute.tumblr.com/schedule. Unless otherwise noted, all program courses will be held at the University of Trinidad & Tobago/Academy for Performing Arts, located at 10 Keate Street in Port of Spain.

Opening Keynote with Dr. Sheron Wray – Wednesday, 25 July at 10am Master Class with Sheron Wray – Thursday, 26 July from 11am – 12:30pm Dr. Sheron Wray is an associate professor of dance and the University of California, Irvine. She is a former U.K NESTA Fellow (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts)—an improviser, choreographer, director, teacher and scholar. She self-titles as a 'Performance Architect', receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Surrey where she developed her theory and practice of Embodiology®, a neo-African approach to contemporary dance improvisation. Her TED talk articulates its distinctions and philosophy http://www.tedxorangecoast.com/videopick/sheron-wray-bodily-steps-to-innovation/. As a performer in the UK she danced with London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Rambert Dance Company between 1988 and 2001. Sheron is widely known for her role as the leading performer and legal custodian of Harmonica Breakdown (1938), choreographed by Jane Dudley. In London between 1992 and 2004 Wray was artistic director of JazzXchange Music and Dance Company. As a result of her 4-year NESTA fellowship, dance of the African diaspora, jazz and improvisation intersect in her concept of digitally enabled improvisation which manifests in the award-winning Texterritory. Texterritory is an interactive performance platform created in collaboration with Fleeta Siegel. Recent productions include Texterritory Congo, Digitally Ever Present and Texterritory USA.

MASTER CLASS: “Performance Art” with Sheena Rose - Wednesday, 25 July from 1pm – 3pm Sheena Rose is a Barbadian artist, whose practice involves mixed and new media, including animation, drawing, painting, performance and video. Sheena has exhibited internationally at MoCADA, Queens Museum, Turner Contemporary and Residency Gallery. She has represented Barbados in the Havana and Jamaica Biennials and been awarded residencies at Alice Yard, Greatmore Art Studio, Tembe Art Studio, OAZO-AIR, Art Omi, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Diaspora Vibe and Fountain Head. In 2016, Sheena performed in South Korea during the Gwangju Biennial. Sheena’s work has been included in Prizm Art Fair, Third Horizon Film Festival and Rush Philanthropic Foundation Arts Auction Art for Life. Her paintings are also on the cover of several books, including “See Me Here: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraits from the Caribbean” and “The Star Side of Bird Hill” by Naomi Jackson, the latter of which was named the best book cover of the year by the Huffington Post and EPeople Magazine in 2015. Sheena holds a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and has been  featured in Travel & Leisure and twice in the New York Times.

“Caribbean Futurisms” WORKSHOP with Makeda Thomas  - Thursday, 26 July from 9am – 11am Through my choreographies and research, “The Light Fantastical” (current), “Bring de Power: Orisha Dance as a Mobile Technology of African Diasporic Identity Making” (2014) and “Brown Girl in the Ring: Caribbean Considerations of the Afrofuture” (2016), I've been exploring how Caribbean cultural forms navigate time and space, and innovate new histories, sciences and aesthetics that inform a matrix of what Conor Tomás Reed calls "Caribbean Futurisms”. As we move through what an Afrofuturist lens does for an epistemology of Caribbean performance studies, I'm further interested in how those futurisms could be embodied, choreographed and performed by contemporary Caribbean dance artists and makes for a robust Afrofuturist aesthetic, practice, and performance. For this session, we'll explore choreographic and performance technologies of the works mentioned, and older work like “Subtle Changes/The Talented” (2003).

Described as belonging to that new breed of contemporary artists, ‘the postmodern African Diasporan dancer-scholar whose work goes beyond stereotype and the market appetite for clichés regarding the black dancing body’, MAKEDA THOMAS has created several works through cross-disciplinary collaboration with artists around the world. Her choreography, films and site-specific work has been presented internationally at HARLEM Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Teatro Africa, Mozambique, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Live Arts, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, CCA7, Port of Spain, and Teatro de la Ciudad, Mexico with awards and commissions from Creative Capital, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation,and 651 ARTS Black Dance: Tradition & Transformation; among others. Thomas is the Founding Director of the Trinidad-based Dance & Performance Institute. “Caribbean Dance” WORKSHOP with Chris Walker Thursday, 26 July from 1:30pm – 3:30pm and Friday, 27 July from 9am – 11am Saturday, 28 July – Beach Lime, Las Cuevas Chris Walker (New Waves! Program Director) is a dancer and choreographer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, He is also the founder and artistic director of “VOICES” a dance company exploring the fusion of Caribbean dance and contemporary styles using the traditional stage, alternate spaces, and multimedia as a medium. He's taught Caribbean Dance Workshops in Jamaica, England, and the United States and conducted several successful artistic residencies including at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges and Temple University, among others. Mr. Walker is a graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and holds an MFA and BFA from the State University of New York, College at Brockport where he taught for more than two years. In 2004 Walker received the highest award in the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts Competition in New York, and a Certificate for Merit from the American Theatre Festival Association for his choreography of “Once on this Island” for Brockport’s Department of Theatre. He has since returned to Jamaica to work with the NDTC and his alma mater, the EMCVPA, where he serves as a consultant in the department of Folk and Traditional Studies. Most recently he received a nomination for “best choreography in a musical” for Jamaica’s Annual National Pantomime and continues to tour and conduct artistic residencies at schools and colleges throughout the United States.

MASTER CLASS: “Dances of the Orishas” Trinidad and Tobago Orisha Performing Company Friday, 27 July from 1pm – 3pm Founded in 2014, the Orisha Performing Company translates Orisha traditions into Performance Art using dance, song, drama and music. This session is with Artistic Director Adam Pascall and company member, Mindy Giles.

MASTER CLASS: Dance of the Moko with Jhawhan Thomas Sunday, 29 July from 10am – 12pm. Keylemanjahro School of Arts & Culture Jhawhan Thomas won the title of King of Carnival in 2008 for his portrayal with Pandemic Rage and placed 3rd for his 2016 performance, “Ras Nijinsky as Anna Pavlova in ‘The Dying Swan’” designed by legendary masman Peter Minshall. Thomas has developed a class that explores his distinct approach to the practice of moko jumbie dance: This class requires spirit and sneakers. Class begins on 2’ stilts and progresses to 4’/5’. The history of moko jumbie throughout the African diaspora - beginning with the Congo and arriving at Trinidad & Tobago - is explored, as is the role of spirituality in the performance of Moko. Participants will walk, step, learn how to fall, do core and leg exercises; come to understand the power of the moko jumbie and meaning of “the vengeance of the moko”.

“Caribbean Futurisms” WORKSHOP with André Zachery Monday, 30 July from 9am – 11am and Tuesday, 31 July from 1pm – 3pm Cultural Folklore, communal narratives and spiritual allegories are the solid but nimble threads that bind generations within the African Diaspora. Across this spectrum artist are using the stories, tales and characters mythologized in their childhoods (and creating new images) and re-imaging them in several contexts: Films. Digital books. Web series. Animated, virtual, and 3-D environments. However, before any of this work is made in these spaces they exist in our bodies. This workshop will be focused on ways artists use their cultural iconography as tools to devise movement, choreography, and relationships first between bodies in space and then how they are translated to another medium.

André Zachery is a Brooklyn, NY based interdisciplinary artist. He holds a BFA from the Ailey/Fordham University program and a MFA in Performance & Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College. His artistic practice is grounded in devising choreographic, performative and multimedia projects exploring contemporary Black cultural aesthetics and practices. He is the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group and a founding member of the collective Wildcat! Zachery is a Jerome Foundation supported 2015-17 Movement Research A-I-R and is a recipient of the 2016 NYFA Fellowship (Gregory Millard Fellow) in Choreography. He also was a guest faculty artist-in-residence in Fall 2016 at the School of Dance at Florida State University and is currently a guest faculty artist for 2017-2018 at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

“Caribbean Dance” WORKSHOP with Jean-Sebastian Duvilaire Monday, 30 July from 1pm – 3pm and Tuesday, 31 July from 9am – 11am 1: A Glimpse of Haitian Vodou through AfrikAyiti Dance. Our goal in this workshop is to get a glimpse of Haitian Vodou through Dance as an art form, utilizing what i call the AfrikAyiti Dance system. The class will include song, dance, and philosophy rooted in Haitian Vodou and in what we call in creole "kilti Ginen" (which refers to the African Culture we know through orally transmitted traditions from our African Ancestors, or through blood memory as Afro-Descendants). 2: "Kase" - Dancing between silence and rhythm. In Haitian Dance, "Kase" refers to a certain break in the body, in the rhythm, and in the overall balance of things. We will explore the concept behind "Kase", requiring each to research within their bodies in relation to rhythm and silence.

Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire (Baba-Seb) is a young Hougan and Haitian Artist who strongly believes in the use of the performing arts to trigger social change. He has trained in African and Afro-Haitian techniques, as well as in classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance. Sebastien has worked with many artists internationally, and travels to teach, choreograph, and collaborate with artists throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and West Africa. He is the founder of the AfrikAyiti Project, and always wishes to promote Africa together with Haiti in sharing his culture where ever he teaches or performs. He recently moved to Boston,  where he has been performing with JAE/Jean Appolon Expressions. Outside of JAE, Jean-Sebastien continues to teach and choreograph, pursue study of Vodou, and runs a small cacao processing company in Haiti called Tahomey. His commitment to cultural sustainability is mirrored in his work with Tahomey, which employs and networks small-scale cacao farmers in rural Haiti.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS   Jouvay Ayiti Emancipation Mas - Thursday, 26 July -  Friday, 27 July from 5pm – 8pm; Sunday, 29 July from 3pm – 8pm; Monday, 30 July - Tuesday, 31 July from 5pm – 8pm. Studio 66 Jouvay Ayiti is a Mas Camp-us concerned with the ways in which MAS can be used as a strategy in consciousness-raising, formal and popular education and development. Founded in 2010 as a response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti in January of that year, Jouvay Ayiti operates as a collective involving faculty at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Studio 66, Curepe Scherzando, and the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. The initiative advocates the need for a new relationship between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean based on sharing knowledge and resources, mutual respect and sustainable collaboration, in recognition of the fact that Haiti has always been the critical centre of and challenge to our own creation of a Caribbean. Today, Jouvay Ayiti offers training in the arts of traditional mas making, and 'Master of the Mas', a semi-lime series in which limers get to meet 'up close and personal' the veterans of Trinidad and Tobago's mas traditions. Be that as it may, the major component in this programme remains the presentation of a Carnival band.

Robert Young's Dotish Tour - Friday, 27 July from 10pm – 4am Dotish Tour travels to an Orisha Yard on the last day of an Orisha Ebo/feast. You are encouraged to be participating observers, share dinner... give thanks. Hosted by Robert Young, Creative Director of Fashion and Design House The Cloth, the tour offers an unique adventure into Trinidad’s spiritual practices and Caribbean religious heritage. This is the hidden underbelly of Trinidadian culture. Forbidden under Spanish, French and then British colonial christianity, the darkness of night became the survival tactic for these West African descendent religions. “Dotish" is a colloquial word meaning stupid. Robert describes that the tour is “designed to leave one really feeling dotish over how little we know and how little we are taught. You will gain perspective, build community with other people and witness hidden parts of our history and religious life.” For insight into the experience of an Orisha Feast, visit: https:// www.ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/20/piece/877.

UHURU Movement and Music Workshops for Children are infant and toddler classes geared towards developing social, cognitive and motor skills through music, dance, movement games, obstacle courses, interactive stories, craft making and song. In these 30 minute workshops guardians and children learn and use elements of sign language to express themselves and communicate with one another. The class promotes the innate qualities of a child's movement and reinforces their right to be free inside their own bodies. Uhuru is Ki Swahili for freedom. Uhuru workshops have been taught  to 2000 children in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Long Island, and Trinidad, West Indies.

SPECIAL EVENTS New Waves! 2018 Opening Celebration Wednesday, 25 July at 7pm An evening of exclusive performances with a program that features New Waves! 2018 Guest Artist, Sheena Rose (Barbados) in “Island and Monster”, a highly anticipated showing by local performance artist, Michelle Isava, and Alanna Morris Van Tassel's "Yam, Potato an' Fish!".

PERFORMANCE: “Island and Monster” by Sheena Rose "This performance has been developed in response to Sheena’s conflicted feelings of belonging and displacement, which emerged with her return to the Caribbean after completing an MFA in North Carolina. To reckon with her changing relationship to her home, Sheena becomes both the island and the monster, looking in from outside as a way to negotiate this return." -Jessica Taylor, Royal Academy of Arts, (See Sheena Rose bio above)

PERFORMANCE: "Yam, Potatoe an Fish!" by Alanna Morris-Van Tassel "Yam, Potatoe an Fish!" is a multi-media performance art project ​and solo dance ​exploring the passage of time and movement of people​, amidst my family's story of migration from the Caribbean to Brooklyn. This piece was initially developed during a Creative Residency with Art On Purpose, in residency with the Brooklyn Ballet School and Creative Outlet Dance Theater of Brooklyn; and with financial support from individual donors.The piece is set to premiere in Fall 2018.​ Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2018, is the Artistic Director of Alanna Morris-Van Tassel Productions. Alanna danced for 10 years with TU Dance, and also with Nathan Trice/RITUALS, Andrea Miller (dir. Gallim Dance), and Janis Brenner & Dancers.

Beach Lime -Saturday, 28 July, Las Cuevas Beach Join New Waves! 2018 at Las Cuevas for a Beach Lime, with Chris Walker's popular “Caribbean Dance on the Sands” class, live drumming by Lion and Redman, and a specially prepared meal in cooperation with the Las Cuevas Fishing Village.

SUNDAY LUNCH Sunday, 29 July at 1pm Join New Waves! Faculty and Playwright, Tony Hall for an afternoon gathering with the New Waves! Community, delicious food, and a talk on “Emancipation Methodologies”. Limited Seating. RSVP [email protected].

“Emancipation, here, is based on the belief that the state of emancipation is achieved in two very broad stages. The first stage is the historic liberation from chattel slavery by the African peoples of the new world. The second stage is an awakening to a spiritual transcendence of the mundane, physical, everyday existence of the illusion of the ego and its relationship to the oppressive authority and tyranny of the organized nation state. And jouvay, the name given to the opening ‘ritual of the sunrise’ at the dawn of the Caribbean Carnival, is carried as an enduring metaphor for the beginning or awakening of a distinct and unique human consciousness of fluid and authentic individuality, as opposed to static and commercial individualism. Today, we concern ourselves with the second stage. Today, we engage in the unavoidable life struggle with this seemingly impossible and somewhat improbable second stage.” - Jouvay Popular Theatre Process [JPTP]: Finding the Interior"

Tony Hall functions as a playwright, screenwriter, actor and director. He hails from the city of San Fernando, he has written and directed for street, stage and screen since the late 1960's. And since 1987 Tony has collaborated in the masquerade (Mas), and contributed to T&T's famed Carnival celebrations, as a 'Mas Maker'; including working closely with Carnival Mas Master, Peter Minshall. Mr. Hall is an alumnus of the University of Alberta and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and has presented the Jouvay Popular Theatre Process [JPTP], implemented worldwide as a performance model for actor 'training' and play-making as well as for personal and community 'development'. JPTP is a drama workshop which, through 'every day' performance values, describes and dissolves into oblivion the 'cliches' of awakening, self-realization and group mobilization that are embedded in the Emancipation Performance Traditions developed on the Caribbean streets.

Emancipation Day - 1 August 2018, Port of Spain

During the last week in July, leading up to August 1st, Emancipation Day in the English-speaking Caribbean, the people of Trinidad and Tobago, led by the Emancipation Support Committee, pay homage to ancestors who struggled for centuries for our freedom, in a manner befitting the level of sacrifice and achievement, and homage to the African builders of civilization on whose backs they stand. (From: http:// www.panafricanfestival.org/.) On 1 August at 7:30am, we meet at IndepenDANCE Square (in front of the Treasury Building on Brian Lara Promenade). Together, we'll dance through downtown Port of Spain to the Lidj Yasu Omowale Emancipation Village.

2018 PROGRAM PARTNERSHIPS In the past eight years, New Waves! developed strong strategic partnerships with more than 30 organizations throughout the Caribbean diasporic region – its most significant, with the University of Trinidad & Tobago/Academy for Performing Arts, but including the National Dance Association, Tobago Division of Culture, the National Council on Indian Culture, COCO Dance Festival, and Alice Yard. New Waves! continues to position itself as a leading institution for dance and performance in the Caribbean.

UTT/APA The Port of Spain campus of University of Trinidad & Tobago, Academy for Performing Arts has served as the main site of New Waves! Institute since its beginning in 2011. This comprehensive partnership has provided classrooms, dance studios, a music studio, and performance space to New Waves! participants, faculty and staff. Each year, New Waves! provides full scholarships to dance students in the Bachelor of Arts program, offering access to world-renowned dance educators and academics, and thus strengthening and fulfilling the mission of the University. Art on Purpose Art On Purpose is a multifaceted lifestyle brand that incorporates dance, fashion and jewelry design. Guided by the tenets of self development and the willingness to learn, grow and improve, Art On Purpose offers classes, workshops, consultations, creative residencies, performances, retail and dance studio space rental in Arima at East Yard. As a 2018 New Waves! partner, Art on Purpose Founder, Jamie Philbert will coordinate and teach the Uhuru Music and Movement Workshops for Children formalizing the New Waves! Children and Youth Program.  

About New Waves! Institute The New Waves! Institute was established in 2011 and has since gathered over 300 dance artists, teachers, and scholars in the Caribbean. Each year, participants, staff and a renowned faculty of international artists form a supportive and inspiring community that has created a unique space for dialogue, networking, experimentation and collaboration. The program has been made possible through a major partnership with and held at the University of Trinidad & Tobago/Academy for Performing Arts, within the National Academy for Performing Arts in Port of Spain in 2011-2013 and 2015. In 2014, the New Waves! Institute was held in Jacmel & Port au Prince, Haiti and in the New York in 2017. New Waves! Institute is a program of the Dance & Performance Institute. Founded in 2010, the Dance & Performance Institute is an international community of dance and performance artists, a forum for exchange, and series of programs on contemporary dance and performance based in Trinidad & Tobago. The Institute also spearheads the Artist in Residence program and the Carnival Performance Institute. The Dance & Performance Institute is directed and curated by Makeda Thomas, with the support of a growing community of artists, scholars, teachers and network partners. 

# # # New Waves! 2018 Coordinating Team Makeda Thomas, Founding Director [email protected] Chris Walker, Program Director [email protected] Brittany Williams, Program Coordinator [email protected] Rose King, Program Coordinator - Participants [email protected] Jamie Philbert, Program Coordinator - Faculty & Guests, Children & Youth Program  [email protected] Sophie Bufton, Public Relations and Promotions Coordinator [email protected] Shane Boucaud, Transportation Director [email protected]