Keep Movin’ On in Trinidad and Tobago: the complexities of COVID-19 on dance and dance education

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic entered Trinidad and Tobago on 12 March 2020. We immediately went into lockdown and borders were officially closed to all travellers, including nationals. The Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, cancelled Carnival for 2021 on 28 September 2020. This was devastating news for a culture and economy dependent on the celebrations. The pandemic took a toll on the mental health and well-being of everybody, but the arts were particularly struck hard. How did this impact the sector of dance in the community and in education? What are some ways that people still engaged online with dance in education and in performance? Through a mixed-method approach, this paper reflects on the cultural aspects of dance in Trinidad and Tobago and how the pandemic altered ways of dance education, social engagement, and technology.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• dance education
• global south
• Caribbean
• social media
• dance and technology
• race and gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. To wine means to ‘move your hips and waist in a “winding” motion, hence the name. The dance is peculiar to calypso, although someone with real skill and dedication could wine to any kind of music’ (Allen-Agostini 2019, 120).

2. Chipping is a movement that involves ‘[s]tepping or shuffling to the down beat of a Carnival song in a manner that has subtle rhythmic reverberations in the rest of the body’ (Martin 1998, 224).

3. ‘It is one of the great ironies of decolonization in Trinidad that racial tensions have taken the form of horizontal hostility between blacks and Indians (the two largest ethnic groups with its own related histories of exploitation-slavery for and indentureship for Indians), rather than vertical hostility directed by blacks and Indians together against the economically privileged French Creole elite, the white ex-plantocracy’ (Puri 1997, 120).

4. Please see https://www.cocodancefestival.org/ for more information.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margaret Jean Westby

Dr. Margaret Jean Westby is an artist, researcher, and educator, who currently teaches dance at the University of West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. She completed her PhD in Humanities- Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, where her research-creation dissertation makes a mess of dance through feminist Science and Technology Studies. She studied the intersections of dance and technology through earlier degrees in New York City (BA Marymount Manhattan College) and in London (MA Brunel University). She creates and collaborates in art performances, installations, and films throughout Canada, Europe, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, and the United States.