Press Statement

 Students at Shiva’s School of Dance are benefitting from the one-week residency of choreographer, dance professor, and researcher Kieron Sargeant, who is also a Grant Fellow in Interdisciplinary Performance and Dance at the University of Iowa.

The overarching aim of the residency, Shiva’s principal Tavia Hunte said, is to expose students to other teaching styles and techniques by a world-renowned choreographer.

The sessions also aim to challenge the up-and-coming dancers to reach beyond their comfort zone to unearth new possibilities for increasing their dance vocabulary.

They will also learn new dance cultures and enrich themselves culturally. The students will cover traditional folk dances specifically Bele and Jig from Trinidad and Tobago, African contemporary fusions, and more.

The classes with Sargeant are designed to accommodate students at various dance levels. Sessions begin at 3:30 pm daily and end at 9:30 pm. Shiva’s School of Dance holds classes at UWI Open Campus on Factory Road.

“We are pleased to have this opportunity to expand our students’ knowledge and capabilities from a myriad of perspectives, including dance and culture. Kieron is a highly trained and equally talented artist with two decades of experience. He has worked extensively across the Diaspora, and we are grateful to have him here with us. When that type of talent and commitment to the arts meets the enthusiasm of our students, we are certain to create something magical, not just for our students but dance in the country,” Hunte said.

She added that the choreographies from the workshop would be showcased at Shiva’s School of Dance recital on July 1 and 2, 2023.

Sargeant, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, drummer and dance researcher emerging out of the African-Caribbean Diaspora tradition. He is currently a Grant Fellow in Interdisciplinary Performance and Dance at the University of Iowa.  Sargeant holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University, a Master of Arts (MA) in Community Dance Practice from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Dance from the University of West Indies.

Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in documenting, assessing, and analyzing dance traditions of the Caribbean and establishing a canon of dance teachings and workshops, informed by his research, to popularize the ancestral survival of movement traditions between the Circum-Caribbean and Western Africa.

Sargeant has conducted African Diaspora and Caribbean dance Masterclasses at Queensborough Community College, University of Iowa, Hofstra University, NYU Steinhardt, New York University, and Simon Fraser University of Contemporary Arts. Prior to this, he taught Masterclasses and Workshops in African-Caribbean, African-Diasporic, and African-contemporary at Ecole Des Sables (Senegal), at the Mojuba Black Dance Festival, the University of Florida—at the National Dance Education Colorado Conference, Sacramento State University, at Columbus State University, at Florida State University, at the Edna Manley School of the Performing Arts (Jamaica), at The Dance Guild (Nigeria), International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference (IABD) and the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD)