Marquise Brown, a recent graduate of the Dance Unit within UWI St Augustine’s Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), will soon be taking his skill and knowledge of dance to Europe. The young dancer will spend three months in Scotland teaching, doing workshops, performing, and helping to organise the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival Carnival taking place in July 2022.
The activity is being organised by the Edinburgh Festival and the Belmont Freetown Cultural Arts and Folk Performing Company in Trinidad and Tobago. He is scheduled to stay at the University of Edinburgh. Marquise is one of the members of Belmont Freetown taking part in the cultural exchange initiative.
“I’ll be working with other artists from different countries,” he said, “along with another Trinidadian dancer, Ms Okia Brathwaite.” Among his activities, Marquise will be “teaching some of the folk dances of Trinidad and Tobago, like the Calypso dance and Sailor dance, in different schools and communities in Scotland.”
The initiative is an emerging artists’ exchange programme run by the Edinburgh Festival. Belmont Freetown “consists mainly of young adults” and has the main objective of fostering “youth engagement through cultural and arts around the community”, a statement from the company explained. Marquise is a senior dance member.
“He is very much what we need for creative and festival arts,” said Ms Deboleena Paul, Lecturer and Coordinator of the Dance Unit at DCFA. “He is very passionate about the art form, and very patient. He gives himself time to learn.”
Marquise is one of the students that was highlighted previously in UWI TODAY in an article on Indian dance and music at DCFA, https://sta.uwi.edu/uwitoday/archive/march_2020/article3.asp. At the time, a final year student, he commented that, “we have to give back that same love and appreciation for the art itself” that teachers like Ms Paul gave to them.
Now, he is elated about this new opportunity:
“I've always wanted to travel and dance, and this is truly a dream come true. On the trip I want to share my culture, knowledge, and offer a great presentation for Trinidad and Tobago. I also want to learn and experience other cultures. One of the best parts of the trip is that I will be able to really learn a lot from not only the Scottish, but from people from different parts of the world.”
He also recognised the role that the DCFA has played in his development, saying it had “made [him] into the person able to get this opportunity”. The Dance Unit, he said, had exposed him to different genres and helped build him as a teacher.
