Dance & Performance Institute celebrates 10th Anniversary with New Waves! 2020 from 29 July to 1 August in Port of Spain, Trinidad
Makeda Thomas, a dance artist whose artistic practice, scholarship and teaching are situated at the intersection of performance practice, diaspora theory, dance studies, ethnography and black feminisms, hosts the 10th Anniversary of the Dance & Performance Institute with New Waves! 2020 from 29 July to 1 August in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
New Waves! Institute has engaged over 800 artists from around the world through its programs: an annual gathering hosted in Trinidad & Tobago since 2011 (in 2014, the program travelled to Haiti); a carnival performance program that grew into New Waves! Mas - which produced for Trinidad Carnival (2019) and Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day Carnival (2017, 2018); and a scholarship program offering dance studies to local artists in Trinidad & Tobago, and for Caribbean artists in the diaspora to study dance with leading institutions, artists and scholars in New York City. The Institute’s founding artist-in-residence program has hosted over 30 international artists and scholars. And in 2018, “Making Stage: Dance Curation in Trinidad & Tobago” was published in “Curating Live Arts: Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice”, documenting the New Waves! Commission Project. To celebrate is the birthright of the Institute - to mark 10 years of important work by independent artists for dance and performance artists in and of the Caribbean and its Diasporas.
With a consistent flow of impressive cohorts each year, many have been invited to return for New Waves! 2020.* More than 30 guest artists are invited to invoke a practice that includes dance, song, word, and play; to create a space where “dancers could dance and be healed from the laborious hierarchies of imperialism and colonization; a space where we could “each re-strategize our own personal vision”. Through four days of performance, movement and reasoning sessions, screenings, communal meals, and informal limes, New Waves! 2020 will explore how dance artists, scholars, teachers, administrators, those in dance production (lighting and costume designers, musicians), and other leaders in the field of dance galvanize, play, workshop, commune, disrupt, engage, celebrate, mourn, heal, and move. Our vision is to embody the depth and spirit of contemporary dance and performance practice in the Caribbean and its Diasporas - in an organizing principle of ‘Emancipation’ - and connect in essential ways that alters and brings out light in one another.
Major program highlights for New Waves! 2020 include: an Opening Celebration in collaboration with Guest Artists; a two-day exploration through a series of solo performances, workshops, film, installation, and movement sessions; and a special Emancipation Day presentation.
See Full Program Information for New Waves! 2020 here.
To join us for New Waves! 2020, apply online now at https://form.jotform.co/93291810944865. The particiation fee is $500 USD, which includes all program events, workshops, and local transportation. Let's Dance!