News Releases

UWI presents Fete de la Dance to usher in the Holiday Season

For Release Upon Receipt - November 21, 2014

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – The Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) Dance Unit of The UWI St. Augustine will present Fete de la Dance on two nights: Saturday, November 29 from 8pm and Sunday 30 at 6pm, respectively, at the JFK Lecture Theatre on the St. Augustine Campus. The mission of Fete de la Dance is to promote dance arts, create new opportunities for dance students to perform and provide new spaces for dancers and audiences to interact with each other through dance. 

Fete de la Dance will feature “Into Me Into You,” a duet choreographed by Alumna Roxanne De Souza and danced by graduates Ian Baptiste and Salome John. The duet represents a love story between two young lovers and will recreate the dynamics of a tempestuous relationship expressed through embodied connections and disconnections, ruptures and attachments.   

UWI’s Festival Dance Ensemble will surprise the audience with three new dances: ‘Shadows Approach,” a contemporary piece choreographed by Sally Crawford; “The Festive Occasion of Dhassara,” an Indian piece choreographed by Deboleena Paul, and “Fire and Water,” a fusion piece choreographed by both instructors. Crawford has also choreographed the solo piece “Simple Kind of Man,” danced by Dance Degree student Zari Kerr, winner of the Felix Harrington Prize, while Paul has choreographed the duet “Saraswati Vandana,” interpreted by Dance Degree students Anya Reyes and Danielle Balroop. 

Dance Degree student Lee-Anna Boyce will share with the Fete de la Dance audience her talented Secondary School Dance students Kenson Laudat and Shanika Blackman, both winners in the Sanfest Festival. The two solo pieces choreographed by Boyce are: “The Tribute,” a piece dedicated to the victims and survivors of cancer, and “Motherless Child,” a piece that expresses the difficulty of growing up with an authoritarian father as the only parent in the household. 

Tobago’s folk dances will be represented by the piece “Temne Fusion,” a colourful expose of Tobagonian culture choreographed by Dance Degree student Jillian Franklyn and interpreted by dancers Keisha Davidson, Lizelle Taylor, Christelle London and Kimmie Potts. 

“Broken,” a piece choreographed by Lecturer and Dance Coordinator Jorge Luis Morejón, in collaboration with Zari Kerr and Dance Degree student Candice Brathwaite, references an important parable from the bible. The archaic story interpreted by the duet reveals universal themes such as humbleness, opulence, greed, grief, godliness, in an attempt to connect the dance experience with a lost sense of the sacred. 

The Caribbean Dance Degree Class will bring to Fete de la Dance’s audience Trinidad and Tobago’s African Nation dance “Saraka, (A Thanksgiving).” The vibrant, entertaining and contagious Caribbean piece choreographed by Degree Student and Instructor Mindy Giles, winner of the Humanities Faculty Award, in collaboration with the students will invite both, audience and dancers to thank the ancestors for the blessings received at the rhythm of live drums. 

The tickets are priced at $50 for adults and $30 for students. Sitting is limited. Tickets can be purchased the last working day before the show and will also be sold at the box office on the nights of the production.  

For tickets and further information, please email maria.cruikshank@sta.uwi.edu or call 663-2222. 

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About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation. Website: www.uwi.edu 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

 

 

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